Kicking the Habit
by Cause Without Effect
Summary: Ginny Weasley has been an addict since her second and third years. But when a new addiction, Harry Potter, steps in, she must choose. Harry, Ron, and Hermione help her through the withdrawal. HG,RHr
1. Drugs or Me

**_I do not own any of this._**

_A/N: so, important note: VOLDEMORT IS DEAD. I don't care how you think he's dead, but he's dead. HARRY, RON, AND HERMIONE DID NOT GO ON A MISSION TO KILL HIM. He was just dead. Forever. No buts._

_Also, I don't do drugs. This story is based of that of a girl I met when I was volunteering at a hospital. She was fourteen, had run away from home, and overdosed on heroin. She was going through a rehabilitation program, and I helped her through it best I could. I don't know anything about drugs or alcohol, so this is the best I could do.  
_

Ginny had been protected her whole life.

As a child, her brothers had watched her every move, making sure her breathing wasn't too funny, making sure that she had a cushion below her when she fell, making sure she had someone to keep her away from whatever made her cry. She never crossed the street without a hand to hold until she was nearly nine years old; she simply didn't know what it was like at all to live an unsheltered life.

Then came Tom Riddle.

He showed her memories of the orphanage, of being able to run around Hogwarts and do nearly anything, as long as the teachers had a respect for him, and knowing that even if he was caught, no one would be there to punish him besides the teachers. Tom showed her ways to hide, ways to avoid getting in trouble.

So, she started experimenting.

Her second year, she started doing all sorts of things even Fred and George wouldn't contemplate attempting. Every Friday, she had detention. Every Saturday, she usually had detention. So many letters had been sent home to her mother that she was surprised she never got a Howler back. All the same, her trouble streak ended the same year it started. In all her detentions, she started to meet people she had never seen before.

At age twelve she took her first shot of what she assumed to be firewhisky; she wasn't really sure what it was. But she knew people, she had connections, connections that no twelve-year-old besides her knew existed. Just a few months after the alcohol started, the smoking kicked in. After her first cigarette, she had found the perfect thing to follow up with a firewhisky chaser—nicotine.

Then, one day, when she was near the middle her second year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, someone handed her a cigarette, but it tasted weird. She thought it had some strange filter, but she was wrong. Whatever that cigarette was filled with, it was her happiness, and she needed more.

And so she studied and perfected the art of the blunt.

At age thirteen, she tried every drug she could get. She experimented and tested, finally finding what she liked the most in marijuana and heroin.

By age fourteen, she was dealing, shooting up and smoking, walking from class to class without ever really knowing where she was going. She had a great reputation around school by that time; customers came by the dozen. She was the drinking, smoking, stoner who kept shot glasses under her pillow, needles in her backpack and always had something a little different than water in her water bottle. Her eyes were constantly bloodshot, bruises forever under her eyes from late nights and five hours sleeps five days a week. Of course, she was just about nocturnal on the weekends, try to get her out of bed before sunset and she'll murder you, usually getting eleven hours of sleep each Saturday and Sunday morning/afternoon.

Yet the beautiful thing was none of her brothers knew. The party-girl reputation didn't hit full swing until the year that the twins made their exit, and Ron, Harry, and Hermione were all too out-of-touch with the goings-on in the school to know what was going on with her, regardless of the fact that she was related by blood to one of them.

In fact, it wasn't until the second year she was dating Harry that they noticed anything. It was year three of heavy duty, year five of most, and year four of her children: marijuana and heroin. She had been skiving a lot that year in favor of getting loaded behind statues and in the common room. One day she had been high and getting higher with a friend behind a statue on the third floor, and Harry, Ron, and Hermione walked past, unfortunately hearing Ginny laugh at something that hadn't been relatively close to humorous.

"Gin?" Harry said. "What are you doing?"

"Harry!" she gasped, surprised, passing the joint over to her friend and looking at the pile of carefully wrapped joints in between the two of them. "Oh my God, okay, Harry, I think I should tell you. I'm really sorry you had to find out this way." Her words slurring from a combination of the marijuana and the liquor, and that added to the giggling that she could never stop, she sounded two steps away from crazy when she said the next words. "I've been cheating on you. Well, not technically, more you've been helping me cheat. And the worst part is it's not what you think." She took a deep breath and started laughing. Through her mirth, she managed to choke out, "I've been in love with Mary-Jane for four years."

This cracked her friend up as well, but the trio found it anything but amusing. Ron was red-faced and shaking with anger, Hermione had her hand over her mouth, her eyes shut tightly, and Harry looked deeply concerned. He acted the first, snatching up all the joints in between them.

"No!" Ginny cried. "Stop!" She had reached out to try and get the joints. "I have horrible glaucoma!"

This cracked up Ginny and her friend once again.

…………………………………

That night, when she had relatively sobered up, the trio had a talk with Ginny.

"What else besides pot, Gin?"

"Liquor," she replied simply. "Lots and lots of liquor. And I smoke a lot, too, so much that I rarely care to distinguish blunts from cigarettes. Trust me, I'm not as bad as some of my friends, though. I don't habitually do any other drugs, just experimenting, you know? I've dropped acid once or twice, smoked crack a few times, it left a bad taste in my mouth, snorted cocaine that one time, but my nose bled so much that I couldn't even enjoy it. I had ecstasy three times, but it just wasn't my style. Habitually, though, no other drugs than marijuana…and heroin."

"WHAT?!" Ron roared. "How the hell could you do that to yourself, Ginny, how could you be so stupid and irresponsible to put yourself—your _life—_in so much danger? I thought you were smarter than that, Ginny. I thought you were smarter than—Merlin's _beard!_"

"Ron, calm _down._ That one I've been trying to quit. Bloody hard, though. It hasn't been working out like I thought it would. I've been 'trying to quit' for the last six months."

"_Why_—what goes on in your mind, Ginny?" Ron asked, no longer facing her.

"Nothin'. That's the whole point of it, Ronald, nothing goes on in your mind, nothing can bother you, it's so goddamn freeing!"

"Go commando one day a week!" he mumbled.

"How do you know I don't already?" Ginny smirked. Ron let out a disgusted noise to match his face.

"I thought they called you 'Lighter' because of your hair…" Hermione said, speaking for the first time. Ginny sighed and pulled a Muggle lighter out of her back pocket.

"_Priori_ _Incantatem_," she said. "The teachers love it, and it gives us away. I started carrying this around after a couple detentions from Flitwick."

"How much have you been skiving class, Ginny?" Harry asked. "Why aren't you taking any of your work seriously? You're in your N.E.W.T. years now!"

"Harry, come on," she said, laughing. "I'm at the top of every single one of my classes, when I'm stoned or not. I even took the O.W.L.s—high as the bloody moon, by the way— and passed nearly all of them with no complaints from Mum. I'm learning all the stuff I'm supposed to, just with some added, practical things on the side of that."

"Such as?"

"What other sixteen-year-old do you know that can roll a perfect joint for two?" she asked. "People come to me from all over school asking for them."

"Oh, so you're a dealer too? I can't believe this, Gin, I thought you had a little more sense than this, I thought you were smarter than to do this shit to yourself!" Harry barked. "You better get your act together, Ginny, because I can't do this, I can't be with someone who destroys themselves day in and day out."

With that, he walked toward his dormitory, Ginny calling after him, begging him to come back.

That had been enough for her, and she had immediately gone up to her dormitory and threw out every single thing she had: hundreds of cigarettes, joints, bags of pot and papers, bottles and bottles of alcohol, white powder she couldn't distinguish, hypodermic needles; she was surprised how much stuff she uncovered. Hermione had been with her, to make sure she actually threw it all out, and when she had finally turned to say, "I think that's it," Hermione looked livid, holding the overflowing rubbish bag.

"Ginevra Molly Weasley, you are lucky that I am so afraid you might die right now, or else I would _kill_ you," Hermione said. "I'm going to get rid of this right now."

She took out her wand, and Ginny grinned.

"Don't burn it," she said. "There're enough drugs in there to get the whole castle contact high, enough nicotine to turn every person's lungs black, and the alcohol is pretty strong, it'll just set stuff on fire a thousand times easier. Plus there's papers in there. So refrain from fire."

Hermione looked down at the bag. "You are going to be really messed up for the next few weeks."

Ginny sighed, picking up all the clothes she had thrown around the room from digging around her trunk. "Yeah."

"People who go cold turkey have the worst withdrawals. Insomnia, irritability, depression, anger, hallucinations, anxiety—not to mention the fever, vomiting, sweating, loss of appetite, aches, pains…" Her voice broke off, and she reached into the bag and pulled out four bottles of alcohol.

"What are you doing?" Ginny asked, looking at her like she was crazy, picking up the bottles and placing them back in the bag. "I'm quitting, Hermione, that's it! No more! Get them away from me!"

"No!" Hermione said, pulling out the bottles again. "Excessive alcohol consumption stimulates certain receptors in your nervous system, and as the consumption increases, they become desensitized and decreased in number. When you stop, your nervous system suffers from uncontrolled synapse firing. This could cause life-threatening seizures, heart failure—abrupt alcohol withdrawal could be fatal, Ginny."

"I know that, Hermione, but this is what I have to do," Ginny said. "Harry is the best thing that has _ever_ happened to me, and I am _not_ going to risk our relationship because I couldn't handle a few side effects. Damn it, Hermione, I've tried a dozen different drugs, I'm used to hallucinations, aches, pains, sweating, and insomnia. I smoke two packs a day, I am used to loss of appetite. I smoke pot every day, I'm used to some fucking anxiety. Hell, it might be good for me, but god_damn_ it I will be more of a wreck if I lose Harry than I ever will be in withdrawal. So get rid of all of it, all the drugs, all the fags, all the fucking alcohol."

"The drug withdrawal will be different than the alcohol withdrawal. You can go cold turkey on the marijuana and the heroin and the nicotine, but I'm not letting you do that on the alcohol. We'll wean you. Gradually. Start with—how much did you used to drink?"

"Depends on the liquor. But generally two to three bottles a day of firewhisky, and then three or four of vodka or rum or tequila or whatever Muggle stuff Pace could get a hold of."

"Pace?"

"Just a nickname. She's always pacing in front of the Room of Requirement to fill it up with all the liquor she can, just so she can sell it or drink it herself."

"How do you get all the money for this, anyway?"

"I get frequent customer discounts from all my friends, and then I sell it to other people for just a little less than the price it would be through anyone else, but higher than I paid for it, in the end getting more money than I spent. All the while, I get to enjoy it myself."

"It's a shame such brilliant business transactions must be kept secret from the government."

"Besides, I also sell stuff for Fred and George. Primarily Skiving Snackboxes, I am after all known around here as the Queen of Skiving."

"Not something one should be proud of, Ginny," Hermione said, extracting more full and partially-full liquor from the bag in her hands.

"Get rid of the alcohol, Hermione," Ginny said. "I have to do this."

"There's another way. We'll start out with scheduled intake: two shots at breakfast, between each class, at lunch, at dinner, and before bed. Next week, we'll cut down to only one shot. Then start going after every other class. The next week, every three classes. The next week, just at breakfast, break, lunch, dinner, and before bed. The next week, we get rid of the one at breakfast. Then the one at break, then the one at lunch, then the one at dinner, and finally the one before bed. That way, it's not so immediate and your nervous system doesn't completely shut down," Hermione said. "Plus, this way _I_ can handle the liquor so as to make sure you don't binge."

"What about weekends? When there's no classes?" Ginny asked.

"So you're on board?"

"What about weekends? When there's no classes?" Ginny asked once again, her voice starting to sound desperate.

Hermione smiled. "We'll figure out a way, Ginny. Maybe a reward system. On weekends, every homework assignment you complete, I'll give you some. The same, though. We'll start out with two shots, then one, then every other homework assignment, and so on, until we get to for completing all your assignments. That's including a certain timeframe of studying. I'll be strict about this, Ginny."

"But I get liquor?" Ginny asked, starting to get excited.

"Yes. You pick, too. Each day, you can have a different one if you like. But I'm not letting you mix. Pick your poison and stick with it."

"And you'll explain it all to Harry? You'll tell him I could die and everything?" Ginny said, now very excited.

"Yes."

"Can we start now?"

"The day is almost over. Tomorrow, I promise."

"Can I shoot up right now?"

"Shoot up…No! Ginny!"

"Well, I was on a roll."

"No, Ginny. No heroin, no marijuana, no cigarettes—no drugs. That's where I draw the line."

Ginny sighed. "I know. I took a larger dose of heroin than usual. It should tide me over for a long, long time. I might not even start feeling the withdrawal effect until tomorrow night."

"Ginevra Weasley! This is about quitting, not about binging!" Hermione sighed, lining up the liquor bottles on the nightstand. She held the black rubbish bag in front of her and poked her wand inside of it. "_Aguamenti_." She said, and it filled up with water. The bag filled with water. She then removed her wand and poked the outside of the bag, making it disappear.

"Now that that's taken care of…what now?" Ginny asked, sitting on her bed and drawing her knees up to her chest.

"What do you do when you're not getting stoned or getting drunk?" Hermione asked. Ginny looked out the window for a moment, looking very pensive.

"Look for someone who can help me get stoned or drunk, buy something that can help me get stoned or drunk, go to the Room of Requirement to get myself stoned or drunk…or spend time with Harry. Since I probably want to avoid the first three, and Harry is currently furious with me, I am absolutely at a loss for anything to do."

"Why don't we go and tell Harry what you did? I bet he'll be really proud of you."

Ginny sighed, then nodded.

…………………………………

They found Harry in his dormitory, along with Ron. Hermione, nodding at Ginny and placing her hand on her arm comfortingly and reassuringly, took Ron out of the room to explain everything to him. Ginny looked at the curtains pulled around Harry's bed and, feeling rather stupid, knocked on the wall next to Harry's bed.

"Harry? Can I please talk to you? It's really important."

"Fine," he said brusquely, his voice so intense it made her flinch. He opened the curtains, but then turned over, hiding his face from her.

"Harry, I must tell you first that this was stupid of me from the start. I've known that all the time, I've just never had an incentive to stop. I could have killed myself, I could have overdosed and then only been around people so stoned they didn't realize that I was unconscious for a reason."

"Why?" he asked in the same curt, almost violent voice.

"Because. I don't know. I've just always been so sheltered, so protected my whole life. I didn't even see any blood on myself until I was six, that's how protected I am. But the diary…it fucked me up, Harry. That's all the justification I have. Tom Riddle fucked me up and I rebelled because of it. It started out innocent, just some detentions, some skiving classes, some missed homework assignments—then it escalated into something that could hurt me or cause me to hurt others."

"So it's been like this since you were twelve?"

"Just about, yes," she said, sighing. "But not anymore."

"What do you mean?"

"Why do you think I'm here right now? Harry, I just threw out everything. All the drugs, all the cigarettes, all the blunts, all the papers, all the needles—it's gone. The only thing that's left is the alcohol, and that's only because Hermione wouldn't let me get rid of it."

He sat up, staring at her now. "Why not?"

"Abrupt withdrawal from alcohol can be fatal, she knows that and I know that. So we're going on a schedule. She's going to help me end this, once and for all."

"It's gone, all of it? Just like that? Cold turkey?"

"Cold turkey."

"Ginny, that's going to be hard, dangerous sometimes. Can you handle it?"

"Yes," she smiled. "Of course, I'm going to be a giant, giant paranoid bitch for the next few weeks. Just warning you. I might become impossible to be around, and I'll understand—well, I'll try to, no promises—if you don't want to be around me much the next few weeks."

"No," he said, grabbing her shoulders. "No, I'm going to do this with you. You are not doing this alone."

She smiled. "Thank you, Harry."

He tilted his head. "Your pupils are dilated."

"Shit," she mumbled. "Sorry. I took a giant dose of heroin just after you found out. But I cast a spell so the effects wouldn't start for a while, that way I could get rid of everything and then be left alone to wallow."

"You can do that?"

She nodded. "It really helps sometimes. You can get something in the Room of Requirement, cast the spell, take it, then walk up to your dormitory and be locked in there or with some friends before anything even starts to happen."

"C'mon, Gin. Lay down, here. I'll stay with you," he said, pulling her down onto the bed. Her skin got red and warm, and she held onto him, making moaning noises into his chest.

"Harry…" she slurred cordially.

"Ssh, Gin. Don't say a word."

…………………………………

Ginny woke up with a start and jumped out of the bed. The sun had yet to rise, but she barely noticed, looking around the room. This was not where she was supposed to be.

"Harry?" she said slowly, her words coming out slightly slurred. "Ron?"

No one was in the room but her, and she was very freaked out. "Harry? Ron? Neville? Dean? Seamus? What's going on?"

At that moment, Ron walked into the room. "Oh, you're awake. Go back to sleep, Ginny, breakfast hasn't even started.."

"Why am I in your dormitory?" she asked.

"Last night? Gin, you were so stoned we could barely understand a word you were saying. Harry was a wreck. He didn't want to risk moving you, so he let you sleep in his bed. He stayed up all night, watching you, making sure you were breathing and everything," he said, looking into her eyes meaningfully. "You were."

Ginny sighed and walked to the bed—slowly, so slow that Ron raised an eyebrow and shut his eyes until he heard the bed squeak. "You may scold me as you wish, Ron. I know you're incredibly disappointed in me, as you have every right to be. I was stupid and irresponsible."

"Yeah," Ron said. "But you're getting better. I know you can do this, Ginny. You're stronger than any of us Weasleys."

"Hermione's making me go to all my classes," Ginny said. "I've not gone to all my classes since the middle of my first year. Then I started to miss classes when Tom made me. Since then I've skived at least one or two classes every day. I have someone tell me the assignment, I do it, and then have someone turn it in for me. For the last couple weeks I haven't even been going to any classes."

"You're a genius, Gin, and besides. We'll help you as much as we can."

"For the life of me I cannot remember the last time I went to Transfiguration. The last spell I remember learning from McGonagall, I was sober. Seriously. I hadn't drunk anything alcoholic yet that day, but I was high, which means I must have been like thirteen. Maybe even younger. Shit, I think I was. I think the last spell I learned from McGonagall was turning a beetle into a button. I remember because I thought I was fucking hilarious. She thought someone had hexed me when I didn't know it, but really it was because I had smoked a blunt when didn't know it. I thought it was a cigarette, I was bloody dragging on that thing forever, I didn't let it spoil at all. Then someone told me what it was and I demanded more."

Ron sighed. "How's the heroin settling?"

Ginny lifted her arm. "The initial seems to be over. Am I slurring my words much?"

"Kinda."

"But still somewhat coherent? My sentences making sense and everything?"

"Yeah."

"My pupils are smaller than our bank account though, aren't they?"

Ron laughed. "They really are small."

"I seem to be able to keep my eyes open okay, though…hmm. I must have slept most of it all. I did walk weird, though, didn't I?"

"Yes."

"I just need to eat. That helps. Ooh. I get shot. Two shots! I think I'll go with firewhisky today…help me up, please, Ron?" she asked. He smiled and, though she had her hand out to be helped up, he slipped one arm under her knees and another under her shoulders, lifting her up and then settling her upright.

"There you go."

"Completely unnecessary," she mumbled, then walked out of the dormitory, leaving Ron smiling next to Harry's bed.

…………………………………

Ginny, the sensation still in her throat from the firewhisky, walked into Transfiguration nervously. This was the first step.

McGonagall went through register as they got settled and pulled out their homework assignments from the weekends. Right after "Veraga, Matthew," McGonagall stopped. Ginny, finding this curious, raised her hand.

"Professor?" she called out, trying not to slur from anything that might be left over from her high. "You didn't call my name."

McGonagall looked up, astonished. "Miss Weasley?"

"You didn't call my name," she repeated.

"Please forgive me, Miss Weasley, but I cannot seem to remember the last time you attended my class. Generally you give your assignments to someone else to turn in and then show up for the exams. However I cannot honestly say I recall the last lesson you attended."

"Second year," she said matter-of-factly. "I turned a beetle into a button after my second try."

"Ah, yes," McGonagall said. "Now I remember. You laughed excessively."

"It was very funny," Ginny said. "You then told me I was dismissed early. I take it we have different opinions on what length of time that meant."

McGonagall's lips stretched thin. "Obviously."

…………………………………

"How was your first lesson?" Hermione asked, pulling a plastic bag out of her bookbag and taking something out, expanding it and another object. As she poured the shot, Ginny shrugged, trying not to look eager.

"Easy. I managed to do everything just fine. McGonagall was impressed, but irritated. I haven't been to a Transfiguration lesson in years and yet here I waltz in and do everything perfectly with no instruction."

Hermione handed her the shot, and she gulped it down ravenously. As her friend refilled it, Ginny moaned.

"You never appreciate how good this is until it isn't being poured down your throat every five seconds."

She gulped down the second shot. "Okay…what's my next class?"

"Potions."

"Oh, bloody hell," Ginny sighed. "I haven't been to _Potions_ for Merlin knows how long…I don't think Slughorn has even ever taught me…"

"There's a first time for everything, Ginny."

_A/N: YAY!! I'm so good. This is my first fanfic, so be nice!! : ( _


	2. Invisible Monsters

_Disclaimer: I do not own these characters. _

Ginny groaned loudly, shivering and sweating. Her skin was pale and covered in gooseflesh. She wrapped her arms around herself protectively, rubbing her hands on her covered arms.

"I can't stop fucking shaking…" she said, her teeth chattering. Harry got up and walked over to her, taking her in his arms, trying to warm her up. "I hate this."

"Ssh, Gin, it's gonna be over soon. The first day is always hardest. I promise you this will get easier. Honest."

"Just one little bit, please Harry. Not even heroin. Just a joint. Please. Just a joint. Alcohol is worse for you than a joint."

"And we're weaning you off that, too," Harry said. "You're one fucked up sixteen-year-old, and we're just trying to get you better. We care about you a lot, Ginny, and we're just trying to help."

"I'm feel sick. Everything hurts. Even my hurt hurts. I want heroin. Heroin helps. Please? Heroin makes the pain go bye-bye," she said tiredly, nuzzling into Harry's shoulder.

"Ginny!" Harry said, outraged. "No! Absolutely not!"

"Harry, please. It hurts. It feels like I fell off my broom three hundred feet—which I have done before, so don't even say that I don't know what that feels like!"

Harry turned to Ron, who nodded.

"She was seven. She snuck out when none of us were looking and took Fred's broom out of the shed. Flew too high up and fell trying to do a loop. We didn't find her for nearly an hour. Mum was furious. Broke several bones there, didn't you?" he said, looking at Ginny, who nodded feebly.

"Well, it's rather late," Hermione said, looking at the clock and seeing it was ten. "Are you ready, Gin?"

"Thank Merlin, firewhisky. That will warm me up," she said, so pale her skin now looked the bluish color of heavy ice.

"I'm going to head to bed, too," Ron said after Hermione had given Ginny her liquor and retired. "You coming, Harry?"

Harry shook his head. "I'm going to stay with Ginny."

"No," she said. "Go to bed, Harry. I'll be up a while longer, I have some homework. Go to sleep, really. I promise not to get in any trouble, you have my word."

Harry shook his head again. "I'm staying with you, Ginny."

She sighed. "Fine. Okay. Goodnight, Ron."

"G'night."

…………………………………

_Jesus Christ Almighty, I am never going to get to sleep._

This was a conclusion she had reached an hour and a half ago, but she had decided to forget it. After finishing her homework around eleven, she had immediately gone to sleep, so as to let Harry get some rest. Then she had lain in bed for three hours, finally deciding an hour and a half previously that she was never going to get to sleep, yet she continued to lie there, as if she would change her mind.

Then, irritated after seeing it was after two o' clock, she stood up, put on her Hogwarts robes, and walked down to the common rooms, amazed to see someone already sitting by the dying fire.

"Harry?"

"Ginny," he said, standing up. "Hi."

"What are you doing awake? It's late."

"I know. I was worried about you. I couldn't sleep."

She smiled. "You need to sleep, baby. I'll be fine."

"Obviously not, you're awake. Insomnia is often a withdrawal symptom. C'mere. Let me help you."

Ginny smiled again and walked over to Harry. She lay down on the couch, and Harry got behind her, wrapping his arms around her waist.

"How are you feeling?"

"Tired. I'm tired but I can't go to sleep. _Exhausted_, but I can't go to sleep. So that's making me very irritated. And also worried that I'm going to take it all out on you, so please go back to bed."

"No," he said, moving his hands to her shoulders and massaging them. "I'm staying here with you."

"I'm to wake up in less than four hours," she mumbled. He nodded, his hands going lower.

"Yes, you are."

"Every night I used to get at least five hours of sleep, and then I would sleep the daylight away during the weekend. I haven't gotten a moment of sleep the whole night. It's maddening. I'll go insane by the end of the week."

She moaned as Harry pushed his thumbs deep into her muscle at the small of her back. "Everything hurts," she whined.

"The first day is always hardest."

"You said that four hours ago."

"And I meant that four hours ago. Tomorrow will be hard too, let me assure you. But you will get through it just like you got through today. And eventually it will all pay off, because you will be clean, you will be safe, and you will not be endangering your life day in and day out."

She smiled. "You really care about me a lot, don't you?"

His hands stopped rubbing her back and instead grabbed her head to turn it toward him. "Ginevra Weasley," he said. "I _love_ you."

Her smile widened. "Well I love you too. And you can know it's not the drugs talking, because just one little sentence from you made me stop every habit I've had since I was twelve. I love you, I love you, I absolutely love you."

She could feel him smile into her hair. "That's good. There seems to be a consensus."

"You should go to bed," she said, but snuggling back into him anyway. "I'll be fine."

"I don't want you to be fine," he mumbled into her. "I want you to be extraordinary. I want you to feel so amazing that people will look at you and pay all the money in the world to feel the same way you do."

"Harry…"

"Don't say a word, Gin," Harry couldn't hold back a grin. "I know people pay real good money to feel that way, in fact, _you_ used to be one of them. But I want you to feel that without the influence of anything that can damage your body in horrible, horrible ways."

"You know, time can do the same."

Harry lifted his head from her hair and stared at her, confounded. "Are you comparing time to heroin?"

She laughed. "Well…kind of, yeah. I mean, when you look at it. Time heals the soul, they say. Time heals the heart. But in actuality, time heals the mind. Time makes you forget, time replaces and suppresses pain, so that when you think it's all over, when you think your heart and soul are healed, you find out at any given point that no, they aren't. You _think_ they are, but it's all psychological. Heroin is kind of the same. You have it in your mind that everything is perfect, that everything is healed. The initial burst of seventh heaven, where nothing can touch you, where everything is solved and healed. But it's all psychological. None of it is _real_. You _think_ it's real. Your mind _tells_ you that it's real, it tells you that your heart is healed, that your soul is healed. Then, just like time, just like memories, it bites you in the arse. Because the ecstasy wears off. And it's replaced with this inability to do anything right. Like your whole body is on delay.

"But even though you _know_ all of this is true, you fall for it over and over again. Day in, day out, you let it trick you. You let time bamboozle you, you let heroin bamboozle you into thinking that you are safe, that you're healed, when really, you're not healing, you're not forgiving. You're just _forgetting_.

"Sometimes, you're not even doing that. Forgetting or forgiving—you're doing neither. You're not healing, you're getting hurt. Time won't heal you, it will hurt you. As you grow older, time kills you. Time slowly, slowly kills you. Time knows you're going to die, time knows you have a life ahead of you, but it lets you die anyway. Heroin does the same. It tricks you. It makes you think that it's helping you, it makes you think that this is a good thing, because there can be nothing better than that burst of satisfaction, that burst of nothing-is-wrong-with-me. But in all reality, it's killing you. And same with time, you know it's killing you. You know it's killing you, but you also realize nothing you will ever do can stop it. Because either the heroin will kill you or the time will kill you. But either way, it's tricking you. You can get the happiness, you can get that ecstasy, that elation, that pure bliss…but at a terrible cost. A cost you don't think about, a cost you can't even _fabricate_ when you're high."

Harry shook his head. "You should be a politician."

She laughed. "What?"

"The ability to warp anything into something that can make people connect with you or make them feel like you know exactly what you're talking about at all times is something that usually you can't come across. Especially when you think about that fact that you just compared time to a massively addictive, massively destructive drug. Next thing you know you'll be comparing peanut butter to a major economic crisis."

"Touchy."

"Well I'm sorry," he said. "I just don't want you comparing heroin to something you can't escape."

She snorted. "Isn't that a pessimistic outlook? Harry 'The-Glass-Is-Completely-Empty' Potter."

"It's true. So, really, it's more…Harry 'The-Glass-Is-Empty-Because-I-Drank-It-All' Potter."

"That's a mouthful. I'll just stick with Harry."

"Okay."

They were silent for a moment. Then: "Harry?"

"Yeah?"

"Go to bed."

He grinned. "Refill the glass, Gin, we've got a nice long night ahead of us."

…………………………………

"Neither of you got any sleep last night?" Hermione gaped after Harry and Ginny had hastily explained why they were on the couch together when Hermione and Ron had come down for breakfast. The two promptly shook their heads at the question.

"So you spent the whole night pressed against each other in the common room?" Ron asked, irate.

"Fully clothed," Harry said.

"I was freezing, too," Ginny assured him. "Freezing and shaking and everything. You know how Harry is. Protective as some of Fred and George's defense products."

"Yeah," Harry said. "I couldn't stand to see her miserable like that."

Ron stalked off, mumbling something to himself. Harry released a large sigh of relief and hugged Ginny.

"Never again force me to explain to Ron, Fred, George, Bill, Charlie, Percy, your father or even your _mother_ why I was as close to you as I was last night and in a horizontal position."

"Fine," she grinned. "We'll just have to be as close as you and I were last night and in a _vertical_ position."

"I was thinking more along the lines of tying bells to their necks so as to alert us to when they're coming."

"I'll work on that," she laughed. "Until then, get food in me. I grow weak."

…………………………………

"Defense Against the Dark Arts," Ginny said, taking a deep breath and stepping into the classroom. It was her last class of the day, and she was already five minutes late, as she had tried to skive it after Sprout held her long into the passing time, but then she reconsidered. Immediately upon her entrance, every eye snapped up to her, and whispers broke out. Snape sneered looking at the redhead, and she forced herself to think about the vodka that awaited her after the class was through. Two glasses, because dinner was next.

"Lighter Weasley," someone mumbled as she walked past to the only vacant seat in the room.

"I've never actually _seen_ her in a N.E.W.T. class before…"

"Miss Weasley," Snape said over the ruckus ensuing from her arrival. "First you are truant from my class more than double all my students from all seven years _combined_, then, when you finally deign to show up to class, you are tardy."

"My deepest and humblest apologies, _sir_," Ginny said, remembering Harry's complaints that Snape demanded respect from his students. "Next time, when I deign to show up to class, I will be sure not to let my sluggish gait affect my punctuality."

"While I have you in the mood for a response, would you care to tell me and the class why you were late to class?"

Ginny sighed. "Professor Sprout kept me after class. She too wanted to discuss my attendance record, albeit in more private situation than the one you chose," Ginny snapped, suddenly very irritated.

_Vodka, vodka, vodka…_

_How I'd love to splash it in his face…_

_No! Vodka, vodka, vodka!_

Snape sneered. "Fine, Miss Weasley. Since you interrupted my lesson and I doubt these students want to continue it after this riveting discussion in which you showed just how sarcastic you can be while still resembling polite, we will demonstrate what will happen to people when they skive two years worth of classes."

Ginny scoffed. "Ex_cuse_ me?"

"You will duel me. Draw your wand, Weasley, I do hope you remember basic dueling rules. Rule number one is that a wand is necessary. Rule number two is—"

"—a duel is a formal procedure between two people. It starts with a bow; it does not involve cruelty in any way, including Unforgivables. Rule number three, however, is those are the only banned incantations during a duel unless previously determined between both parties involved. Rule number four: if you at any point lose your wand and cannot recover it, the previous rules are not applicable. A duel ends when one or both parties is disarmed or unable to continue with the fight."

"I see something stuck in your head."

"My head is much more vulnerable to adhesive than one would think," Ginny said, standing up. She drew her wand from her pocket and took to one end of the classroom, Snape to the other. Before he even made a movement, she bowed deeply, almost to the point of being a contortionist.

The students watched in awe as a simply tongue-lashing had turned into a challenge. Usually, duels only happened in this class as demonstrations for certain spells, in which it was predisposed what each participant would do, or between the students and the students only. It was never that the professor dueled the students, none of them had ever heard of it. And yet after two years of absence, Ginny Weasley had managed to set the record in less than five minutes.

Silence was complete until Snape fired a spell and they all gasped. Not only had the professor challenged them, but he had fired the first shot. His gratified smirk combined with the fact that Ginny had appeared not to have made a single movement made the whole class fear that she wouldn't even have made it in the duel for half a minute.

But the serene look on her face made them think she was either stoned or with a trick up her sleeve. Just a moment before the spell hit her, Snape's face turned into the model of disgust, and his spell rebounded off of an invisible barrier.

That's when it all went to hell.

They fired curse after curse, spell after spell, hex after hex, jinx after jinx. They blocked, sidestepped, jumped and bent. Rainbow jets of color ricocheted off the walls and barriers, blasted away walls and floors, formed small gashes on their target, and narrowly avoided the student spectators.

"What is going _on_ here?!"

The horrified voice came from the doorway. Distracted, Snape and Ginny jumped, forgot to block the spells firing at them, and both took damage: the former from the latter's Stinging Hex, the latter from the former's Cutting Curse. Out of breath and sweating, they turned to face McGonagall, standing in the doorway. Every student looked absolutely terrified of the look of rage on her face.

"This class," she said, her lips stretched so thin they didn't even appear to be there. "is dismissed. Every one of you. Out!"

They all scurried away, including Ginny, until McGonagall grabbed her shoulder to stop her.

"You and Professor Snape are coming with me."

…………………………………

"Ah! Minerva! To what do I owe the pleasure?"

"Albus, let me assure you this is not a pleasure," McGonagall said, stepping aside so Snape and Ginny could enter the room. Ginny had several cuts and singes on her face and arms, blood trickling down, her robes torn and singed in certain places. Snape didn't exactly look perfect either, though there was no blood or even scrapes in sight.

"What happened here?"

"I heard noise coming from the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom. I thought it might be two students getting into trouble again. Alas, I was wrong," she said, turning to her colleague. "Only one of them was a student. I walked into Severus's classroom to see him dueling Miss Weasley."

"I assume," Dumbledore said, turning to Ginny with a smile on his face. "that you were fighting back?"

"Yes, sir," Ginny said.

"It has been so long since I've seen you, Miss Weasley, though I am sure you recall how this works. Now, I must ask you though I know the answer, would you care for anything to drink?" he asked, his eyes twinkling.

"No, sir."

"Now, your side of the story?" he said, sitting back in his chair, as if this amused him deeply. "This will doubtlessly be interesting."

"You see, recently I've been attending my classes?"

"Recently?" he repeated, smiling still.

"Quite recently, actually, only since Monday. I haven't really attended a single N.E.W.T. class yet, but I figured it might be interesting. So I attended all my classes Monday and yesterday. The only class I had not attended going into today was Defense Against the Dark Arts. I went to class, albeit a little late, because Professor Sprout, reasonably, kept me to talk about my absence over the last few years."

Dumbledore nodded for her to continue, obviously much more amused by Ginny's blasé attitude than McGonagall, who looked appalled.

"So I went to class and was immediately, and again, reasonably, rebuked by Professor Snape for being late. I responded accordingly."

"She disrespected me and was uncharacteristically irritable."

"Please, allow her to tell the story, Severus, your turn is next," Dumbledore said. He gestured to Ginny. "Please, continue, I apologize for the interruptions."

"It's okay. Well, I guess I was a little angry, I won't argue with that. But then he told me to duel him. He said he wanted to demonstrate what missing two years of classes in a row did to someone. So I stood up, bowed and everything, thinking that he would keep it short. Then he fired a spell. And it was _yellow_. I thought he would send a disarming charm or a Stunner at worst. But he was sending a hex. It was almost too late before I realized it, but I managed to nonverbally put up a shield before it hit me."

Dumbledore raised his eyebrows. McGonagall lowered hers.

"Nonverbally?" she said, turning to Severus, who gave the tiniest, sharpest of nods.

"Go on, Miss Weasley."

"I retaliated, at first out of instinct, then out of anger, because he kept sending these curses and hexes at me."

"Is that all, Miss Weasley?" Dumbledore asked. Ginny nodded and stared into his eyes.

_I'm telling the truth as best I can, Professor Dumbledore. And you too, Professor Snape, because I know you're probably listening, too._

Dumbledore suddenly chuckled from his desk. McGonagall looked bewildered, and Snape simply looked annoyed.

"You have been in my office and detention too much, Miss Weasley," he said before turning to Snape. "Your rebuttal and side of the story, please, Severus?"

The professor looked first at Dumbledore, then Ginny, then McGonagall. Finally, his gaze settled back on Dumbledore. "It is true. All of it. I simply wanted to test her skills. It truly baffled me how anyone could get into a N.E.W.T. level course after missing two and a half years of the course immediately previous to the O.W.L. examinations. I wanted to see how she did it."

"I think all her teachers have been wondering the same thing," McGonagall said, turning to Ginny, who rolled her eyes.

"If this is going to turn into an intervention concerning my record, then may I please be excused?"

"Why now, Miss Weasley? Why after all this time do you choose now to attend your classes? You haven't been to a single Transfiguration class since your second year, and now you decide to go? There has to be a reason."

Ginny sighed. With two Legilimens in the room, her best bet was probably close to honesty. "Harry, Ron, and Hermione found out I was skiving. They threw a fit. They want me to learn, get all the knowledge I can about all the subjects I can before it's too late. So we just—compromised."

"The thing about that is," McGonagall said. "We're not quite sure how much more we can teach you."

She raised an eyebrow. "Huh?"

"We had a staff meeting yesterday evening concerning you. You excelled above all your classmates in just the first few minutes, and with barely instruction. In fact, you manage to perform tasks that require skills learned from previous lessons, lessons you did not attend. You are nearly at the top of the class without ever attending a single lesson. You show skills you are not supposed to possess at the level your classmates are at."

"Such as?"

"Only a very few students are capable of doing nonverbal magic, and that's after hard labor. You spend your whole day in the common room or sleeping and you can just perform it like it's nothing."

"Um…sorry?" Ginny said, not quite sure what to say. They had basically just told her that she had learned everything she needed to know.

Dumbledore laughed. "Let me assure you, Miss Weasley, there is nothing to be sorry about. Now, this little duel. No harm done? Visit Madam Pomphrey and everything should be better."

"M-Madam Pomphrey?" Ginny said, shaking her head. Madam Pomphrey could find out about all the drugs with one spell. "No, no, I'm fine. Battle scars, you know?

She stumbled backwards toward the door. "M-may I be excused?"

"Of course."

…………………………………

Ginny was breathing heavily. She was walking to Gryffindor Tower, in no mood or appetite to go to dinner. The halls were empty, but she felt eyes on her neck. Somewhere, she had taken a wrong turn, and was now completely turned around in this stupid, _bloody_ castle that always had some super secret passage that no one knew of until they were halfway through it and being stalked by something and absolutely terrified to turn around in case it killed her or something.

So she walked the corridors, trying to find where the hell she was. But she was all turned around. Nothing was where it was supposed to be. The eyes were getting heavier. They were closer, now.

_Focus_.

Sweat was coating her neck and palms, and was starting to moisten her forehead. She wasn't even on the right floor, she decided. But the corridor was flat. She could not find a staircase to save her own life. Which, depending on whom the eyes belonged to, might be just the case. There was just walls, and floor, and paintings. Nothing else. She couldn't find a staircase. She couldn't find a person. She couldn't find any indication of where she was.

The eyes were getting heavier. They were closer, now.

_Focus_.

Her breathing got quicker. Okay. She had started on the seventh floor, and tried to go to the seventh floor…but somehow, had taken a passage that had moved her to what appeared to be not the seventh floor, but she did not recall ever taking a staircase. The sweat on her forehead was now falling down her face. Her skin was clammy all over. She was getting cold. Her back hurt. She didn't know where she was.

The eyes were getting heavier. They were closer, now.

_Focus!_

Not knowing what else to do, she sprinted. She still didn't know where she was. She couldn't find a staircase.

The eyes followed her. She felt them. She ran faster, hopping from foot to foot in desperation. There was not a staircase anywhere. The flat ground never ended. It went on forever and ever, always there, always flat. No staircases. She would never leave this corridor. She would never get away from the eyes.

The eyes were getting heavier. They were closer, now.

_Focus…_

"Ow!" she yelped, falling backwards, only to be caught an inch from the ground.

"Are you okay?" a voice asked.

She nodded, panting.

"Harry, they're someone behind me, they're following me."

His eyes screwed up in concern and worry, and he looked straight ahead. Carefully, he helped Ginny stand, then looked down the corridor, before finally bending down and reaching his arm out. Turning back to Ginny, he looked even more concerned than he had before.

"Ginny," he said, holding up what he had bent down in front of. "This is a cat."

She sucked in a breath and looked around. No students were walking the hall, but there was a buzz of conversation coming from somewhere near.

"Harry? Where am I?"

"You're in the entrance hall. You weren't at dinner, so I went out to find you, and you came bolting down the staircase and crashed into me, freaking out about someone following you. The only thing behind you or around here at all was Crookshanks."

Ginny panted, her eyes wide. "The staircase? But…but it was all flat, and the eyes, they were—"

Harry cut her off. "Gin? Gin, c'mon, you need to rest. Let's get you a little food, and then we'll get you to the common room."

"I'm not hungry, Harry. I was going to Gryffindor Tower from Dumbledore's office, and—"

"Dumbledore's office? Why were you there?"

"Because Snape dueled me and everyone had a staff meeting and they can't teach me anymore than I already know and I can do nonverbal magic and I sleep all day and I know that Snape and Dumbledore are Legilimens and I baffle Snape and the light was _yellow_ and I would be really, really happy if I could just get some vodka in me and curl up on the couch with you."

"All right," Harry said, hugging her and kissing her forehead. "All right, I'll talk to Ron. You go in there, try to avoid people's eyes, and talk to Hermione. I'll go in and talk to Ron. Good idea?"

She nodded and mumbled something into his chest.

"What was that?"

She lifted her head. "I love you."

He grinned. "Love you too, Gin."

_A/n Yay! Second chapter done. I hope it still had some humor in it, I don't want this story to be as dark as the plot. Thanks for the reviews and people who have put me on their alerts, and Alison, Rick is now freaked out that Isabel is doing drugs and Isabel now hates you : P_


	3. See Who I Am

"_Six days_, Hermione. It has been six days since I even got more than an hour's sleep, and that was still interrupted by freaky nightmares. I am going _mental_, Hermione," she said. "I haven't gotten a good sleep that wasn't alcohol or drug induced in _years_, I don't know how you people do it."

"Ginny, a lot of this is just the withdrawal. Everything will get better, I promise," Hermione smiled.

"It's been two weeks, Hermione. I am exhausted. I just fell asleep in Slughorn's class after I finished my potion, I swear to Merlin," she sighed, burying herself into the chair.

Hermione looked up from her book. "What do you mean _after_? You finished your potion and had enough time to sleep?"

Ginny nodded. "Everyone takes so much time. So I cleaned up my cauldron and my supplies, full intentions to read about next week's assignment, but I just fell asleep. Almost set my hair on fire, too, I was so close to Matthew's cauldron."

"Wait. _Next_ week's assignment? You're doing _next_ week's assignment?"

Ginny nodded again. "Yeah. Slughorn has me do it kind of backwards. First I read about it and write the essay and everything, then I make the potion. I'm just glad I finished all the work I had to catch up on. Those first ten classes I was doing two potions at once. It was mad."

"How are you pulling this off, Ginny?" Hermione asked seriously, her book now completely forgotten, keeping her voice down so Madam Pince did not throw them out.

"Pulling what off?"

"How are you already caught up and for that matter ahead in all your classes after missing years of them all? Ron overheard McGonagall talking to Sprout about you a few days ago. They said they hadn't seen such achievement in a long time, Sprout said ever. They were saying you could take your N.E.W.T.s now and get Outstanding on all of them. How are you doing this? For that matter, why didn't you do this before?"

Ginny sighed. "A long time ago, in my second year, before I was first starting to skive a bunch of my classes, I realized it was all too easy. I was falling asleep in class when they were talking and I still could do the assignment perfectly. I never read a word of the textbook but I wrote the essays flawlessly and passed the tests with no problem. It made no sense to me. So I started showing up to class drunk."

"Oh God," Hermione mumbled.

"It was still too easy, no matter how drunk I got. Then I started going to class high. Still too easy. I couldn't take it. So I stopped going. I had read the Hogwarts handbook from cover to cover. They couldn't tell my parents if I wasn't failing. And it was all easy anyway. So I did the assignments and had others turn them in for me. I showed up to the exams and passed with flying colors. The professors were all furious, but I had better things to do with my time."

"Like shoot up and drink excessively?"

"You guys always forget the fags. It all started with fags. Well, all the drugs, anyway. I got addicted to marijuana because I thought a blunt was a fag. I love them."

"Blunts or fags?"

"Both," Ginny said, letting out a big yawn and settling herself a different way in her chair. "I'm going to see if I can't sleep for a while."

"Be my guest," Hermione said, smashing her nose back into her book.

"Wake me up before Ancient Runes, okay?" she yawned again.

…………………………………

"For the love of God, Ginny, that is more annoying than anything you have ever done," Ron snapped, and Ginny stopped flicking her lighter open and closed. "Stop it before I go insane and kill everyone here and blow up that lighter."

She glared at him. "What do you suppose I do, then, Ron?" she said through clenched teeth, visibly aggravated. "All my homework is completed, you three are still doing yours, I couldn't for the life of me get to sleep, and anyway it's only ten-thirty, and all my other friends are off getting high."

"I don't care what you do, Ginny, just stop flicking that bloody lighter. Go off for a walk, if you want to get away."

"Like you would let me out of your sight, Ron," she bit off. Hermione and Harry exchanged a glance. This was not the first of their fights in the last two weeks. For that matter, it hadn't even been the first over the lighter. She had been clicking that lighter for two weeks, and Ron had been complaining for two weeks.

"Why don't you go for a walk, Gin?" Harry said. Her eyes snapped to his, searching for sarcasm or annoyance or anything unkind, but he was completely serious and polite. "Meet up with some of your friends. As long as you promise not to do anything, and I mean _anything_, I have no problem."

"Really? Seriously?" she grinned, her eyes brightening. "Oh, _thank_ you, Harry, I love you so much!"

She threw herself on him in a giant embrace and kissed him on the cheek before running out the portrait hole. Harry was smiling, but Hermione and Ron were both glaring at him.

"What the hell is wrong with you, mate?"

"What?"

"You trust her not to do anything if she goes by her friends? How could you? Her friends know her as Lighter, they know her as the Queen of Skiving and as the girl who was crawling into bed just as they were waking up," Hermione said. Harry shrugged.

"I believe in her. She will do the right thing, I know it."

"Nutter," Ron snorted.

…………………………………

Ginny slipped into the corridor on the third floor, the one no prefects ever patrolled by, the one that was by no Houses or professor's quarters. It had taken them all a long time to find the perfect place, and this happened to be it. Another plus, no matter how inebriated you were, you could always find it by the heavy cloud of smoke that was around it and the distinct smell that blackened your lungs and killed your brain cells all at once.

She knocked on the door once, twice, and then tapped with each fingertip. Instantly, she heard locks clicking open and she pushed the door open.

"Lighter!" everyone yelled when she entered. She closed the door, locked all the locks, and grimaced, deciding to start breathing through her mouth.

"I haven't seen you in weeks, where've you been?" Pace asked.

"Yeah, none of us have seen you, Light. Did you get busted?" Burn wondered. He was a fifth year Hufflepuff, legendary setting a desk on fire in his third year when he dropped first his vodka on it, then his cigarette—the source of his nickname. "Isaac, you almost got expelled last year, right mate?"

Isaac, from his place in the corner, preparing to shoot up, nodded. "Burbage caught me with acid and ecstasy, selling it to some kid. Nearly got expelled."

"I said that, dickweed!" Burn yelled.

"Wait a minute!" Gabriel cried, nearly dropping his glass. "I saw you! I saw you in class, Lighter!"

Everyone gasped; Isaac stopped his actions and Pace's eye got wide.

"You what? Lighter, you haven't been to class in three years, some four. What the fuck are you going to class for?" she demanded. As the oldest of them—eighteen, just having barely missed the cut off age—she was mostly the leader, and Ginny.

Ginny was Pace's disciple. She had been taken in at the young age of twelve, a feat no other in the group had on their record. Pace and Ginny were both legendary, the latter as being the youngest to ever join the group, the former as coaxing the youngest person to ever join the group. She had been a second year when she had first started, the closest person to her age being Pace, whom had started to befriend an older group of freaks, the youngest until Ginny came along. When Pace graduated that year, Ginny would be the leader—Lighter the Leader. She would be in charge of the Room of Requirement, getting supplies when needed.

The group in this room was close. When one got detention, you all either get detention to join them or get revenge on the professor that busted them. When you get drugs, you share. When you have a bottle, you pour a drink for everyone. When you lit yours, you lit the others' too. That's just how it worked. They were unspoken rules, but rules nonetheless, and the leader was there to protect not only the rules but the individuals.

"Lighter," Pace said in a quieter voice. "You're smarter than them. You don't have to go. You don't have to work to be something you already are. What the fuck are you trying to prove?"

"I ain't trying to prove anything," Ginny said, not ready to be told off by Pace, the only person in the whole school that smoked more, drank more, and ultimately did more drugs in a week than she did. "I'm just trying to do this right."

"This isn't right, Lighter. This isn't the way you should be going. You are too good for this school, Lighter, you don't need any of this shit. You don't have to worry about getting work once you're out of this dump, you're smart, you're getting good grades, you're a fucking Weasley for christsakes. You've got top grades of your year in every one of your nine classes without even going to any of the lessons. Why the hell now? Why the fuck are you lowering yourself to this now?"

As Ginny looked at Pace, something clicked in her head. Her sickly gray skin, her bloodshot eyes with purple rings underneath, her mussed dark blonde hair, her joint in hand, pack of fags in her shirt pocket—it was like looking in a mirror into a fortnight ago. This girl, this is what Ginny had looked like.

This was not what Ginny wanted to look like.

And that attitude, those thoughts about school, being above it just because of her intelligence—and she had always thought those were her own ideas. Why the fuck had she quit going to class at twelve? She had always thought and told that it was because of the drugs, because of the fags, because of the goddamn liquor. But she was wrong. It was because of Pace, because Pace had told her this is what was right, these are the thoughts she needed to have.

All that time, she had thought herself as an individual. As a rebel because she was who she was. She wasn't a rebel. She wasn't an individual.

She was a drone. She was what she had been told to be when she was high, and it had stuck somewhere.

"What the fuck are you doing standing there, Lighter?" someone yelled, bringing her out of her thoughts.

"Yeah," Burn said, holding out a shot glass. "Fill me up with whatever you've got. I ain't picky."

Ginny looked at him, suddenly very confused with herself. "I ain't got nothing."

Burn groaned. "This ain't time for one of your little grammar lessons about double negatives or whatever. What was it? If you don't got nothing, you got something? Yeah. Then fill me up with whatever you got."

"That's what I'm trying to say, Burn," Ginny snapped. "I don't have anything."

"Lighter, I have never seen you without liquor. You learned the Unbreakable Spell second year," Buddha laughed. He always claimed to find perfect nirvana when he was smashed enough. "Share if you care."

The motto. You never turned down after the motto. If you didn't give after the motto, you were a worse traitor than Peter Pettigrew.

Ginny opened her robes, turned out her pockets and showed them. "I don't have anything!"

"Did you get busted, Lighter?" Heather asked.

"No," Ginny said, then took a deep breath. "I got clean."

The room went silent again, but this time it was piercing, angry, bewildered silence.

"You high, Lighter?" Isaac asked, stopped in his preparations yet again.

"No," she said fiercely. "That's the point of getting clean, Isaac, you don't get high."

Pace grabbed a cigarette box, jamming the joint in her hand into her mouth, and held out a fresh one to Ginny. She took a long drag off her own before pulling it out of her mouth and speaking, holding the fresh joint further out. "Light it up, and have a toke."

"No," Ginny objected in a serious voice.

"I said _have_ _a_ _toke_."

"I said _no_."

"Why the fuck not, what the hell got into you? This is who you are, this is who we are! You think you're better than us or something? First you're going to class, now you go clean? Or maybe the other way around?"

"Look, Pace, I've been fucking up my life since I was twelve, I'm trying not to make a giant mistake!"

"So now you think this is all a mistake? You knew what you were getting into when I brought you here, Lighter, you knew the risks of all this shit and now you're telling me that you don't want to fuck up your life and you don't want to make a mistake? So that's what you think? That this is a mistake, that it's fucking up your life?"

"I'm not saying I think this is a mistake!"

"That's what it sounded like!"

"Look, Harry found out, what the fuck am I supposed to do?!" Ginny bellowed. "I love him and I'm not going to let him go because I was too fucking _loathe_ to give up something that was destroying me anyway! Of course I knew the risks, Pace, you made sure I did! I've been trying to get off this shit for a long time! You know that, I made sure you knew that! Harry is finally giving me a reason, and if I have to trade off giving up something I've wanted to give up and going to class every once in a while, well then fuck, Pace, I ain't gonna turn my back on him because you want someone to roll the best joint for you! So don't you a_ccuse_ me of thinking I'm better than you, don't you a_ccuse_ me of lowering myself, don't you a_ccuse_ me of nothing! I am who I am, and I don't want to be…_this_!"

Pace's face was the model of anger, the joints in each hand, one burning and one not, just helping the picture. "You don't want to be me."

"I never said shit about that, Pace."

"You don't wanna take my spot. That's what you were loathe to do. You don't wanna be me, you don't wanna spend your life getting wasted, do you?"

Ginny chose her words carefully. "I don't want to kill myself and know that there was a way out."

"Never bothered you four years ago, when you started. It never bothered you when I passed you the blunt that day before Transfiguration, it never bothered you when I help you drop acid or take ecstasy or find the Room of Requirement or shoot up. I _taught_ you, Lighter, I _made_ you. If it weren't for me you wouldn't know the difference between coke and crack. You wouldn't know the difference between ecstasy and aspirin, for godsakes, you wouldn't know ANYTHING!"

She jumped off the desk and dropped the unlit joint in her hand, and took a long drag off the one in her other hand before taking a large step forward toward Ginny, her eyes bulging out in anger. Ginny stared at the thing in her hand before taking a step back.

"That ain't marijuana, is it, Pace?" she said. Pace said nothing, just kept walking forward as Ginny walked back. "Are you back on angel dust?"

"What's it to you, Lighter? You're above us, now. You're clean. You're going to classes. You don't appreciate the little things anymore."

"Stop this, Pace. All of you, stop this. Isaac, drop the fucking needle. Burn, drop the glass. Buddha, drop the fag. Heather, c'mon. Michael, stop taking all the fucking pills, you can do it. Gabriel, Crimson, Owl, Raccoon—stop it. C'mon. If I can stop, if I, the worst of you all, can stop cold turkey, then you can, too."

"You ain't going cold turkey, Lighter. I've seen you with Granger."

"Only on liquor. Alcohol withdrawal can kill if not done right. But we can do it, you guys. You don't have to live like that."

"Who the fuck are you to say that?" Michael Corner asked, his eyes unfocused, sitting in the desk with his head tipped onto his shoulder, slouched forward, slurring and mumbling his words, what looked like vomit on his shirt. "A prophet, or something? I don't want to give this up. I like it."

There was a mumble of agreement from those not too intoxicated to respond. Pace gained up on her again, now having her backed into a wall.

"Get the fuck out of here, Lighter. We don't need your guidance. We're fucking wonderful where we are. And if you think you're too good for that, well then fan-fucking-tastic for you. Meanwhile we'll be exactly where we've been for years. Where _you_'ve been for years. Where you should be now."

"Pace, you—"

She was stopped by a slap across the face, so hard she thought it might have dislocated her jaw.

"_OUT, WEASLEY!_"

…………………………………

Harry gasped when Ginny clambered through the portrait hole into the nearly empty common room, her arms wrapped around herself, a deep, red handprint on her cheek. The hand was large, but not large enough to belong to a male. Regardless, he rushed over and helped her to a chair.

"Are you okay? What happened? Who slapped you?" Harry asked before she even sat down.

"Pace," she managed to gasp out, still in shock from what had happened.

"The one who sells you all the liquor?" Hermione said warily. Ginny shook her head.

"She sells it to outsiders. We only sell things to outsiders, the rest we share. Well. I shouldn't say 'we' anymore. I should say 'they.' That's how it is, isn't it? You do drugs, you're we. You don't, you're they. Merlin, she was on PCP again."

"Who?" Harry asked. "Should I be understanding any of this?"

"Pace!" Ginny cried, standing up. "My mentor, the one who taught me everything I know! She was on angel dust, she was fucking smashed! All of them! God, all I could think about standing in that room was all the different diseases I could catch from being in there as long as I was. They asked me what I had, and I told them nothing, but they didn't believe me, and then Gabe told them I was going to class, and Pace went fucking crazy cause she was probably smoking superweed, I should've checked—"

"Superweed?" Ron iterated.

"And she was pissed off and pissed in general and she yelled at me about being above school, and lowering myself, and then they all went crazy when they found out I went clean, and Pace tried to get me toking, but I wouldn't, and she went insane again and spouted off and I had to tell her all about you three finding out and about how I didn't want to lose Harry because I couldn't give up what I've wanted to give up for a while, and then she all but called me egotistical when _she_ was high on dust and refusing to shut up about how she created me and then I tried to tell them all that they didn't have to keep doing this, that I would help them quit, and then Michael accused me of being a prophet and Pace slapped me and threw me out."

"Take a breath, Gin."

Ginny, pacing rapidly up and down the floor, her arms crossed over her chest and the handprint still bright on her face, nodded. "I'll need a breath. I'll need a breath of fresh air because I'm probably contact high and Pace is probably in convulsions from the PCP and Isaac is probably finding a vein for another shot of heroin and catching AIDS from the bloody needle, and Buddha is probably taking too many ecstasy tablets and Heather is probably taking a drag off her thirteenth pack of blunts and Owl and Raccoon are probably just waking up, ready to party till sunrise and then hibernate, Raccoon is probably going to go an hour or so more and then steal from the individual stashes, we'd kick him out if we could ever catch him, and Gabriel is probably dissolving impregnated sugar cubes in his liquor and claiming it works, Michael's probably popping pills like they're Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans, and Crimson—oh, _Crimson_, don't even get me started on what she's probably doing, probably looking for the nearest bloke to jump on top of."

"You people give each other the strangest nicknames."

"That's because we were always high, Ronald!" Ginny grunted. "And Pace—oh, Pace looked horrible!"

"Who is Pace again?" Hermione asked.

"She's the one that I met in detention when I was twelve years old. She's the one that gave me my first shot, my first fag, my first taste of every single drug I've ever tried. She's the one that brought me to a whole new group, who told me to stop going to classes, who told me I was too smart for that, who gave me almost half my thoughts for the last four years—five years—I don't even know how long!"

"So she's who we blame," Ron mumbled.

"And they kicked you out? Of where?"

"Of the classroom. Of the sacred place where they have been going every night for—I don't even _know_ how long, before I joined, before most of them joined—and getting so high that you can barely see each other through the smoke, that's where. And Pace! Oh, _Pace_. I'm going to kill Pace as soon as I get the chance."

"Calm down, Ginny. So Pace slapped you? Why did Pace slap you?"

"I already told you! She was high, she's been smoking superweed, Ron!"

"What the hell is superweed?!" Ron roared, throwing his arms up.

"Marijuana and PCP rolled in the same joint. This stuff is hard to come by, the Room of Requirement doesn't just give you dust, you've got to get it from outside the castle. It's hard work to get yourself some dust, and she's been off of it since my fourth year, but I guess she's back on."

"What the hell is PCP? What's dust?"

"They're the same thing," Ginny mumbled, waving it off, still pacing. "It's weird, I've never tried it, I don't know what it does. But Pace is always a walking mood swing on the bloody stuff, it makes her really aggressive. Fucking crazy shit."

"Okay, sit down, Ginny, just…come on, sit down," Hermione said. "You need to rest. Does your cheek hurt?"

"Like a mother!" she howled, not sitting down even when Hermione put her arm on hers. "I'm hungry…you know I haven't eaten in two days? I haven't been hungry. Well, that's not true. I'm hungry when I can't get food, but then the sight of food makes me sick. And I haven't slept through the night in more than a week. I've been exhausted only when it's frowned upon to sleep. When it is ideal to sleep, however, I am one big entity of energy. I feel like I'm pregnant. Is that what it's like to be pregnant? Would any of you know? No, of course you wouldn't…maybe I'll ask Mum. She'll know. I don't know if I want to be pregnant if this is what it feels like."

Hermione pulled on Ginny's arm to bring her into the chair. "Okay, are you all right?"

"I need a minute. Just a minute…what's that in the fire?...Hmm…it's pretty…," she said, going onto her knees and pressing her chest down near the ground in front of the fireplace. "Why _hello_ there. How are you today? …I'm just great, thank you for asking. Where do you come from? …Well that's far from here. Was traffic bad?"

Harry, Ron, and Hermione exchanged a look, then distanced themselves slightly from Ginny.

"Will she hear us?" Ron asked. Harry shook his head.

"When she's caught in these, nothing will get her out. She's going mad, I swear. The hallucinations, the anxiety. Paranoia, though, it's probably the worst of it. Two days ago she screamed at a painting for staring at her and following, made the poor woman cry, sobbing at her that she hadn't done anything, and Ginny just snorted and said 'a likely story.' Then on our way back upstairs she made a point of apologizing to the portrait. She even asked another portrait to give some wine to the portrait she made cry. The woman was very grateful, I think they're on good terms now."

"How's she going to make it through Christmas next week?" Hermione wondered. "Mrs. Weasley wants everyone together, she won't concede."

"At least she got kicked out of the pot circle, right?" Ron said. Hermione sighed.

"What is the deal with her and Pace?"

"She brought her to the group at the end of her second year. It was mostly sixth and seventh years, that's all they allowed in, but Pace was a legacy, her brother had her addicted to drugs before Hogwarts and Pace didn't find the group until her fourth year. She met Ginny in a detention, and Ginny immediately became friends with her. Ginny came in the group so young that no one knew her. It was apparently a big deal. After that class graduated, they started letting in a more diverse group," Harry said.

"Letting in?"

"Recruiting, I should say. Ginny said she didn't do it and she didn't like it, but she didn't—or couldn't, I think she said—stop it. The only one that came in because of her was Michael. He got into the scene when they were dating, apparently, saw her with a fag and wanted to try it, saw her with a joint and wanted to try it, got addicted to the joint, joined the group and became addicted to ecstasy and some other things I didn't remember because I had never heard of them before. She felt guilty and tried to push him away from that life, but he refused, got a little violent with her, and she broke up with him, made up the Quidditch story to keep the whole life secret."

"He did _what_?" Ron said viciously.

"I know, I had the same reaction. She said it was nothing big, that it happens all the time when you're around drug takers, they get aggressive after too long away from it. Even claims some of them can't make it all the way through a class."

"Oh dear," Hermione mumbled, staring at Ginny, who was still conversing with the fire. "What in the world is wrong with her? How could she ever be so stupid to spend time with those people? She's smart, you've heard the teachers talking."

"Someone told her that. Someone told her she was that smart. Someone told her she didn't need school, that she was above it all. And I'll bet my whole vault it was that bitch Pace. Who the hell does that girl think she is?"

"Hey," Ginny said, walking up to them, looking confused. "What are you talking about?"

"An assignment," Hermione said quickly. "We wanted to give you a moment."

"Oh," Ginny mumbled, looking surprised. "Well, then, okay. Moment over, I guess."

_A/n Long chapter for a short moment, huh? Thanks to everyone who has reviewed or subscribed to this. _


	4. December Is For Cynics

"Cast the spell, Hermione, don't even hesitate," Ginny said, and Hermione sighed and mumbled an incantation. Instantly, the bruised skin under Ginny's eyes disappeared, and she smiled, rolled her shoulders back as habit, and stepped off the train.

Mrs. Weasley hugged all three of them, ending with Ginny, and whispering into her ear, "You and me need to talk, tonight, after dinner."

Holding back a sigh, Ginny stepped back and noticed her mother's eyes sweep over her disapprovingly. Luckily for her, Harry wrapped his arm around her waist protectively. Ron, clasping Hermione's hand like he had won it as a prize, was reluctant to release his girlfriend's hand when they turned on heel to Disapparate, Harry taking Ginny ("Like a bloody child," Ginny grumbled) with Side-Along Apparition.

After a short but heated dispute (mostly from Ginny, with some additions from Ron, but Hermione and Harry just in the corner, blushing furiously, joined in a moment by Ron) on whether or not the couples could share rooms, even with separate beds, the boys headed up to the attic and the girls to Ginny's room. Hermione turned to the younger girl.

"How are you doing so far?"

"I've been here barely more than an hour and I already think the walls are watching me, I already think there are Recording Charms on every single quill. Then again, considering my mother is involved, these feelings weren't unnatural before all this started," Ginny sighed, lugging her trunk up the stairs despite her still aching muscles. Hermione was several steps ahead of her, and the boys even farther, but Hermione stopped at that moment and looked at her.

"Now you're referring to it as 'all this'?" she said quietly.

Ginny looked around and placed her finger to her lips, lowering her voice and telling Hermione, "I told you. Don't you remember? The walls are watching us, the quills are ears. Most things are ears. After we go, she'll listen to what we said. I swear. She finds out everything. And,"—she lowered her voice even more so that Hermione had to lean forward—"she told me we had to talk after dinner. She's good, Hermione, she's very, very good."

"It doesn't have to be bad, Ginny, it could be a neutral or even positive thing. You never know," Hermione said optimistically, but Ginny snorted.

"Nope. Never. I have never had a private talk with my mother that didn't end in either a screaming match or a ridiculous punishment or both. Usually both."

"Keep looking on the bright side, Ginny."

"So naïve," Ginny mumbled.

…………………………………

After dinner that evening, Ginny stayed downstairs to "help clean up." The twins and Ron exchanged a look and told Hermione under their breath to place a Silencing Charm on her bedroom if she wanted to sleep. Harry looked almost frightened for his girlfriend, but she smiled at him, winked, told Hermione to unpack for her, and shooed them all away.

Mrs. Weasley turned to Ginny and motioned toward a seat, taking one for herself. Once they were both situated, Mrs. Weasley started, like usual, with no hesitation.

"I got a letter. From your professors. They say you've been doing exceptionally in class, that most of them have never seen anything like it in all their years of teaching."

Ginny remained silent.

"But they also say it amazes them that you were able to catch up after missing three to four years of lessons," Mrs. Weasley said. "Why would you miss three to four years of lessons, Ginny?"

"I pass the tests, don't I?" Ginny said, trying very hard to keep her temper in check, but finding the fire sparking up in her head. "I've been at the tops of my year in every class since the start of it all, I've passed every test with flying colors, I got twelve O.W.L.s and am taking nine N.E.W.T. classes. It's not like I don't know what they're teaching, Mum, it's not like I am completely missing out because I'm not attending. I know it all, I know everything they are teaching, and I prove that, I pass the tests, so I don't see why I have to wake up at an ungodly hour day in and day out to go to classes to learn things I already know!"

"Don't raise you voice with me, Ginny," Mrs. Weasley said coolly. "I'm just trying to understand, here. Why am I just finding out about this now?"

"The school rulebook states clearly that professors cannot inform parents of absence from class unless demanded by the headmaster, or if the student's marks are being affected severely by this truancy," Ginny recited. "I checked to be sure."

"You didn't want me to know?"

"No, I did not want you to know, I did not want you find out I was skiving class and start making me go. The whole thing is a waste of time for me, I didn't want to be forced to go so that I wouldn't upset you," Ginny said, deciding 'upset' was a better word than 'anger.'

"What made you finally start going?"

Ginny looked at the table and sighed, "Harry."

Mrs. Weasley suddenly looked very surprised, and very giddy. "Harry? Really? What did Harry do?"

She paused, gathering herself. "He made me promise, because he found out I was skiving and he knew I had a tendency to get myself into trouble. And he was worried that I might get into trouble and didn't want that. So, in an effort not to upset him, I started going to class."

"You truly work hard not to upset people."

"I am a thoughtful person," Ginny mumbled, tracing a pattern on the table with her finger. She looked up at her mother. "May I be excused? I'm tired from the trip."

"Of course," Mrs. Weasley said. Ginny stood and walked away, glad she had managed to avoid a screaming match and a ridiculous punishment, but rather confused on how. "Just…how, Ginny? I know you have an excellent memory, but…that's really a bit much…"

Ginny sighed. "Remember when I locked myself up after I got out of the Chamber? There wasn't much to do, and I was terribly searching for something to take my mind off the whole ordeal, so at night I snuck out of my bedroom and stole books from the study. Old schoolbooks, of the twins, of Ron, of Percy and Bill and Charlie. I must have read them several hundred times. It all just stuck."

"Okay," Mrs. Weasley drawled.

…………………………………

Ginny sighed when she reached her bedroom, closed the door, and sank down to the floor against it. When she opened her eyes, she saw Hermione looming over her, holding a paper bag in her hands. She raised an eyebrow.

"What's that?"

Hermione held up the bag. "Funny. I was just about to ask you the same."

"What?" Ginny snorted, then took a closer look at the bag. "Shit. I told you to unpack for me. Is that…?"

"I found it in the wardrobe," Hermione said. "There isn't more in your trunk, is there?"

"No," Ginny assured her. "But I could never get a good sleep that wasn't induced by alcohol or drugs, and while it was easy to get the alcohol, I stashed heroin in the wardrobe for those really bad days. Marijuana wouldn't work, she would smell it, but there are joints and fags hidden in several places around the vicinity, along with some heroin buried deep in very secretive places. I'll dig it all up tomorrow, I promise. And I'll find all the joints, I think I remember most of the places. Hollowed out tree trunks, under moss, under rocks, behind things in the broom shed."

Ginny stood up and sat on her bed.

"Will you be able to get to sleep tonight without him?" Hermione asked quietly, and Ginny sighed.

Like a loyal puppy, Harry had, every single night since that first night when they had declared their love, lain behind her on the couch and wrapped his arms around her waist or else caressed her hair or cheek, talking all night long with her or whispering soothing words in her ear when she was too tired to talk. The nights she had gotten sleep, he hadn't. He kept watch of her, making sure the nightmares didn't hurt her terribly. Even when he was too tired to stay awake, he slept behind her, and she turned on her side and stroked his hair or his cheek, humming a song to keep away anything that might haunt his dreams like they haunted hers. She had grown dependant on his presence, unable once the sun went down to even close her eyes unless he was near. Hermione had understood immediately and let them be. She had even convinced Ron to let them be, even though he had taken much persuading and many days to get used to the fact.

"I don't think I could get to sleep tonight with him," Ginny said. "I'm fucking wired."

Hermione shot her a look, and Ginny groaned.

"You _know_ what I mean, Hermione."

…………………………………

"Couldn't sleep?" Harry grinned, seeing his girlfriend situated with a cup of tea in front of the roaring fireplace. He raised an eyebrow and pointed to it. "How'd you—"

"They trace households, not wands," Ginny said, taking a deep breath and gulping down her tea. She was wearing flannel pyjamas, had three blankets wrapped around her body and was curled up close to the hearth in a tiny ball. Harry, in pyjama bottoms and a T-shirt, sat behind her and wrapped his arms around her, bringing her close to him. She leaned into his warmth and sighed with content, bringing her knees up to her chest.

"Cold?"

"_Freezing_. I hope you don't mind your girlfriend with a few missing toes, maybe a finger or two."

"You're sweating, love," Harry smirked.

"You're teasing, _love_," she retorted, the effect ruined by her teeth chattering. In desperation, she placed her mug of tea to her lips and leaned her head back, turning the mug completely upside down before letting out a whine and setting it down, nudging it away with her foot. Harry wrapped the blanket more securely around her, holding it together with his tight grasp on her, and they lay down on the ground in front of the fireplace.

They remained silent until Harry's gentle snores filled the room.

…………………………………

Ginny watched the shadows get longer and longer as time flew and the fire died. She slipped one blanket off of her, then another, and then the last, took off her pyjama top to reveal a too-small white T-shirt, and draped the blankets over Harry, whom still had an arm protectively wrapped around her. He had not moved from his position once the whole night; in the last two weeks she had discovered how freaky she found it that Harry never moved in his sleep unless he had a nightmare.

She slipped onto her other side to face him, watching his chest move up and down in perfect rhythm. The distorted, grayish light shone onto his face, reminding her why she had fallen in love with him on platform nine-and-three-quarters at age eleven. His glasses were askew from sleeping on the floor, and his hair was mussed even more than usual. Not able to help herself, she reached out and stroked his cheek. He moved not an inch, merely let out a small noise that sounded like pleasure.

"Ginny!" a voice hissed.

Her head popped up to see her mother's shocked face, and, repeating a mantra of swear words in her mind, slipped out from under Harry's arm, replacing herself with one of the bunched up blankets, took her mother's arm and led her out of the room and into the kitchen. She inwardly chided herself for forgetting the fact that her mother often woke up at ungodly hours, when she herself would usually go to sleep. As soon as she closed the door, Mrs. Weasley blurted out, "What exactly was that?"

Ginny decided to try to stay calm and choose her words carefully. "That was Harry sleeping next to me."

"Why?" she demanded.

"Because I have been unable to sleep for a long time now. I have been going through a difficult time, and for the last two weeks, I could never sleep. Harry found me in the common room one night staring at the fire and took pity on me. He sat on the couch, but fell asleep, so I lied next to him all night. That has repeated the last couple weeks. Sometimes, though, I fall asleep, though that is very rare, and most of the time a lot of it is me convincing Harry to go back to bed because he needs his sleep, but he always refuses."

Mrs. Weasley mumbled something under her breath, and Ginny would have sworn by her hand and God that it was an obscenity. "He cares about you, doesn't he? And you care about him."

Ginny sucked in a big breath and looked down at the floor. "Don't be mad at us, Mum. Don't yell, remember it's four-thirty in the morning."

"What? What are you talking about?"

She took another deep breath and said, "I love him. And he loves me."

Darkness flashed over Mrs. Weasley's eyes. "You are sixteen years old. You know not a thing about love."

"I am sixteen. But that doesn't mean I'm stupid, that doesn't mean I'm naïve, it doesn't mean that I can't really, truly love someone," Ginny said, working hard to not raise her voice, but the pressure was building up in her throat, and she knew that soon, it would be impossible for her not to yell.

"Some people my age don't even know what love really is."

"But some do," Ginny said tightly, her teeth grinding to stop herself from screaming. "People my age get married and stay happy their whole lives. For example, you and Dad."

"We were not sixteen," Mrs. Weasley grumbled, turning around and lighting a candle.

"Right, I'm sorry," Ginny said, sounding very disturbed. "You were seventeen. Are you trying to tell me that the wisdom comes with those few months? So…Harry knows what love is, but I know nothing of it, because I have not turned seventeen yet?"

"Ginny—"

"You're right. I'm stupid. I know nothing. Hey! That there, what is that thing! That thing, you sit in, that has the four stick-y things sticking out the bottom, what is that? For that matter, what am I? Who am I? Damn, I'm so stupid I've forgotten my own name. It starts with a 'juh'…maybe Georgia…I hope that's not my name, I don't particularly care for the name Georgia, I don't know what those Muggles were thinking three hundred years ago…or four hundred, maybe it was…"

"Ginny—"

"Ginny! That was it! That was my name! Great. Now I just have to remember what the sit-on stick-y thing-y ma-bobber is."

"Ginevra Weasley," Mrs. Weasley hissed. "Could you defy all reality for one moment and be serious?"

"Well if you put it that way, of course."

"Ginny, you are sixteen. You have a long way to go before these things should be in your thoughts. You have a whole life ahead of you."

"A life I want to spend with him."

Mrs. Weasley took a breath in, then released it. "You don't know anything about being in love, Ginny."

"And you did?!" she screamed, throwing all hope of calmness out the window and exploding, buggering all the work she had put into keeping her temper for the last few minutes. "Mum, your relationship with Dad has been more serious than mine with Harry since you were younger than me! How do you expect me to take your words serious when you don't mean them?! You're a liar! You're a hypocrite! Why are you so determined to make me think I know nothing and am too immature for this, even when we both know that's not true?"

"I'm not trying to—"

"Liar! You're a liar, you're a hypocrite! Stop telling me to live my life in a way you never could!"

"I'm just trying to make sure you can have a while in your life where you don't have responsibility! You've been going to school since you were eleven, I don't want you to be attached with someone the moment you walk out and never have a moment for yourself!"

Ginny knocked a chair over. Mrs. Weasley flinched, staring at it now. Even in all their heated arguments, she could never recall Ginny getting this angry. Her face was contorted, a scarlet that would make Godric Gryffindor take a few steps back. She was visibly shaking, and the skin over her knuckles was transparent as she clenched her fists so tightly.

"I am _not_ going to lose Harry! Not for a moment, not for a second of my life! I don't care what you say, I don't care what you think! Just let me live my life and stay the hell out of it!" she screeched, storming out of the house through the back door.

…………………………………

Her fingers were colors they were not supposed to be, and the sides of her hands and wrists were bloody, but eventually, she got all the way through the ice and snow and into the grass and dirt. Seeing the cloud of hot breath she flooded on her freezing, blue fingers, her teeth chattering and her bare feet sliding on the ice and sending a chill through her, she started on the hard dirt and mud. Anger pulsating throughout her, she scooped a giant handful of mud from the hole and threw it onto the snow next to her. With a muddy, bloody hand she scrubbed tears off her face.

She was angry. Oh, she was fucking _pissed off_. Who the hell was her mother to tell her to step back? She loved Harry. She loved him, she wanted to spend forever with him.

They had even talked about it before. One night, he had told her that he wanted to be married at some point. He had even said soon. He had said better young, so you could spend longer together, longer happy. He had said soon, better…he had even said it would be her. What had she done? Smiled. Smiled and said she wanted the same.

She wasn't a child!

Letting out a small whimper and seeing it hanging in the air, she dug deeper, hitting rocks and hard packed dirt but not stopping. The sun was rising behind the clouds, now, and she was far away from the house, although she did not give a damn about it. Her knees slipped on the ice and she pounded again on the ice, shoving the dug-up mud away from her before wiping more tears off her face.

Why the _hell_ had she buried it so deep?

She finally hit something sleek, grinning and scooping the dirt up from around it. Pulling the shoe box out of the hole, she tore the lid off and let out a sigh of satisfaction. She ripped off the sleeve of her old, thin T-shirt and threw it aside, then tied the rubber hose around her upper arm. Rubbing her arm to warm it up, feeling goosebumps the size of apples, she had to again wipe tears off her face, taking a gasping breath to see it float away.

As she reached into the shoebox again, she hesitated, realizing what she was risking here. He said he loved her. And she loved him. He said that he wanted to be with her, and that nothing would stop him or get in his way.

This was how to test it.

…………………………………

Harry woke up and found a blanket instead of Ginny. Panicked, he stood straight up and ran upstairs into her room. Without knocking, he ripped the door open, to find Hermione fast asleep in one bed, and the other bed vacant. He bolted down the steps and into the kitchen, skidding to a stop and almost crashing right into a table.

What he found was not Ginny, rather, her mother.

_Shit…_

"Good morning, Harry," she smiled, though it did not look welcoming or kind.

"G-good morning, Mrs. Weasley," he stuttered, standing straighter. "Er…have you seen Ginny?"

"I _have_ in fact," Mrs. Weasley said. "I believe I saw her in your arms, on the floor, pressed very close to you, in front of the dying fire, covered with a blanket, downstairs, where no one could find you."

Harry sighed. "I should explain that. You see, we've—"

"I know, Harry," she said. "I know full and well. Ginny and I had a long talk about it. Well, talk is general. She screamed at me, and I would have screamed at her back if she would have paused. After screaming that she loved you and refused to let me be involved in her life, she stormed out of the house and I haven't seen her since. That was an hour ago. She's not even in the wards."

Noticing that her voice sounded more fretful than angry, he nodded.

"I'll go look for her," he said, slipping on trainers and running out the door before she could get in another word about it.

…………………………………

"Ginny!" he cried.

She looked up at his tortured face, but her violently shaking hand did not move from its general position. He took a step forward, and she shuffled backward on her knees, making a panicked sound and spitting out a column of fog.

"Don't do it, Gin. You've worked very hard, you've been amazing. Don't go back on your word, don't break your promise to me," he said, holding his hands up and taking another step toward her. The look on her mud, dirt, and blood covered face looked like that of someone who belonged in a padded room. Her eyes were wide, her muscles were twitching, she looked horrified and grief-stricken, and he would have liked nothing more than to get that look off her face and the needle out of her hand.

"Would you still love me?" she asked, shuffling backward through the snow again, pressing the needle down on her skin until beads of blood came out.

"What?" he whispered, staring at the blood and the needle, unable to tear his eyes away, scared for her at that moment, scared for what was happening to her.

"Would you still love me if I pressed this fucking plunger down?" she asked firmly, loudly, and angrily, pressing the needle farther into her.

He winced and took a step forward, but she shuffled back, the blood and dirt and mud on her arm, with the needle sticking out, terrifying him just as much as her blood and dirt and mud coated face, with the expression still there. He kneeled down in front of her, and she hobbled backward, also on her knees.

"Ginevra Weasley," he said, focusing on her face and not her arm, and somewhere in her mind she realized she should know the words coming, as this start was familiar. "I will love you from now until the day I die. I love you. I don't want to lose you. That's why I made you stop this. I will still love you if you press the plunger down. I will still love you if pressing that plunger down kills you. But I don't _want_ that, love. I want you. I want you to be healthy, and clean, and I want to be able to say things to you and know you're going to remember two hours later, I want to be able to get drunk _with_ you. I don't want you to hurt yourself like this. Are you trying to tell me that you wouldn't freak out if I had been a drug addict since I was _twelve_ and tried more drugs that you had heard of? But you would still love me. Just like I still love you, and I will never stop. So please, Ginny. Just put the goddamn needle down. Don't do this. Please, Gin…I'm begging you. Don't do this to yourself. I know you're upset, I know that you're hurt, but please, let's keep the hurt emotional. You're already bleeding in more places than I would care to know of, you're already covered in mud and dirt and water. Don't hurt yourself anymore. Please. I'm begging you, Ginny. Just…please."

She stared at him, looking almost lost.

"Take the goddamn needle out of your arm, Gin. Please."

Ginny took a gasping breath before taking the needle out of her arm and untying the hose to have more blood drip down her arm. He smiled and placed his arm gingerly around her neck.

"I—I'd help you get cleaned up, but my wand is back at the house. Let's just bury this, okay? Put the needle and the…whatever the hell that is, back in the box. Let's take you home."

"But…but Mum, she's…Mum will…she's gonna…" Ginny shook her head, putting the lid on the box and laying down in the mud and snow.

"C'mon, Gin," he said. "You haven't slept in over two weeks. I'll carry you. It's freezing out here, and you're barely dressed."

"I'm fine…" she mumbled, but he looked at her blue toes and fingers before taking off his T-shirt and tearing it in half, wrapping one half around her feet and the other around her hands. He then proceeded to lift her, kicking hard at the shoebox, which skidded across the ice and into the trees. "Wazzgoinon?"

"Go to sleep."

"But—"

"Sleep. Please, Ginny. I'll be your best friend."

"My best friend gave me drugs. Lots of them."

"Nice try, love."

…………………………………

When a shirtless Harry came into the back door of the Burrow with a sleeping, mucky and bloody Ginny in his arms, Mrs. Weasley let out a great gasp. But he moved right past her, dropping his much-too-blue girlfriend on the couch and cocooning her in the blankets that had lain abandoned on the floor. Sighing with relief, he walked over to the coat rack and pulled a jumper over his head, finally turning to Mrs. Weasley, who was currently casting warming and cleaning spells on her sleeping daughter.

"I owe you a massive explanation, Mrs. Weasley," he said.

"What happened to her?"

"She's going through a hard time right now. She feels a lot of pressure, she's genuinely stressed out. One thing she has been able to rely on is that I am always next to her to cheer her on, to make sure she's all right. You really struck a nerve, whatever you said to her. I found her pounding at the ice and digging through the mud and dirt."

"What else?"

Harry hesitated. "That's it."

"I don't appreciate lying, Harry."

"Mrs. Weasley, I am not lying."

"A lie of omission is a lie just the same, Harry."

"Mrs. Weasley, I am not omitting."

She looked at him thoughtfully, examined him deeply, staring into his eyes, and said, "I've been hearing a lot about Ginny. That she's stressed, that she hasn't been sleeping well, that she has only recently started to apply herself and go to classes, something for which I must thank you. However, I want to know why. Why is she so stressed? Why hasn't she been sleeping well? Why has she looked like she's lost ten pounds when she weighed less than a toddler to start with? Why hasn't she eaten a thing since she came here? Why had she not been going to classes? What could you have possibly found so wrong in her not going if she was doing as well as she was? I want straight answers, Harry. What is going on with my daughter?"

Harry took a moment to process each question, trying to think of answers and searching for the safest one to discuss with Mrs. Weasley without Ginny's previous consent.

"I want her to get an education."

"She had an education a long time ago, Harry, because of that diary. You know that. Dumbledore has made sure you know that and I know that and no one else knows that, even her. But I want to know why. Why do you care, Harry? Why do you care how she does in school, if she goes?"

"I want her to have the experience. Hogwarts is a big deal, she should be experiencing classes, not just stuff in the corridors. And I want her staying out of trouble. I…Mrs. Weasley, I love your daughter. All I want is for her to be safe, healthy, happy."

"She's not one of those things right now, and as far as I can tell it's because of you!"

"In the long run what I am doing will be good for her. I promise you, I assure you," Harry said. "I'm sorry for this. I hate seeing her like this, but I also hated seeing what she was before this. And this will end, soon. She was a mess, Mrs. Weasley. She was sleeping constantly through the day, staying up all night. Not eating at regular times and sneaking from the kitchens at night. She kept getting caught with her quote unquote 'friends' late at night by prefects, either just out after curfew or causing some sort of trouble or both. I told her to get her act together, to stop spending time with the people who got her in trouble. She stopped and started spending her time better ways, but she can't sleep because her schedule's off, can't eat because she isn't hungry when the meals are, and is under stress because she's been trying to catch and keep up with her schoolwork. There's a lot of work she missed, and she had to give the teachers the impression that she learned it. It's stressful, and I've been trying to help her."

Mrs. Weasley shook her head. "There is something wrong with her, Harry. There is something wrong with her that isn't stress, and I'm going to find out what it is."

_A/n I do hope this cleared a few things up for you…_


	5. Girlfriend in a Coma

Ginny sat straight up to see her mother, her father, and Harry sitting in the chairs around her. Ron and Bill were pacing around the room, but the twins were perched on the arms of Harry's chair, making him nervous, she could only imagine. It took her a moment to remember what had happened, and she shot an apologetic look over to Harry, who smiled meekly, then Hermione, shadowed in the corner, who shrugged knowingly.

"What's going on?" she asked, standing up. Immediately, more hands than she could count pushed her back onto the couch, and Harry kneeled next to her, resting her head on a pillow. "Harry, what's going on?"

"I'm sorry," he said quietly.

"You told them?!" she hissed ferociously. Harry nodded solemnly, staring meaningfully into her eyes.

"It was getting out of control, Ginny. Your family needed to know about your depression," he said, saying the last word emphatically, and Ginny suddenly caught on.

"I wish you hadn't told them, Harry."

"It was important he told us, Gin," Bill said, pointing at her.

"I have it under control," she told them, looking at the floor. "I'm almost over it. I've been going to classes, haven't I? It's been years since I've been able to ever go near one, and now I can. The moodiness is getting better. I really think I can do this."

"Maybe it's not as simple as that," Mrs. Weasley said. "You could get in a lot of trouble with this. You may be over it now, but it will come back. It might not be so easy then. You really need to take care of this now, Ginny. There's therapy, medications that you could really consider."

Ginny stood up again, this time dodging the hands. "I have this under control for right now. When it comes back, if it comes back, we'll deal with that then. Until then, I'm doing great. I really just want to get to sleep right now, if you don't mind; I'm tired and very much would like to sleep. May I please be excused?"

Mr. Weasley sighed. "You may."

She shuffled her feet for a moment, wrapping her arms around herself, exposing more of her stomach as her shirt pulled up, making her only colder. Though unintelligible, they saw her lips move and heard the faint rumble of a murmur.

"What?"

"I need Harry," she mumbled, slightly louder. Harry stood up from beside the couch and stared ruefully at her parents; they sighed but allowed them to walk upstairs together, Hermione and Ron in tow.

…………………………………

"I love you," she said, hugging Ron and kissing his cheek, making him go red.

"I love you," she repeated, hugging Hermione and kissing her cheek, making her smile.

"I love _you_," she grinned, hugging Harry and kissing his lips, making him pull her flush against him.

"Thank you so much for telling them I suffer from depression," she beamed, not even thinking of the oddity of the statement combined with the tone in which she was speaking. "How ever did you think of such a thing on the fly like that?"

"We looked at the symptoms," Hermione told her. "Irritability and general moodiness, insomnia, decreased appetite, weight loss, decreased interest in common activities, pulling oneself away from social engagements, chronic pain, agitation. To be honest, without the hallucinations, paranoia, and anxiety, you sound more like you suffer from depression and less like you're going through withdrawal."

"Pulling oneself away from social engagements?"

"You've lost interest in your friends. Usually you're constantly borrowing owls to send letters to your friends over any holiday. You haven't sent anything to anyone. Don't think your mother hasn't noticed, Ginny. You've been…secluded with Harry since we came."

"You told me to avoid my mother at all costs."

"Yes, I did," Hermione drawled. "Have you ever heard the saying: 'the best laid schemes of mice and men'?"

"Oh my God, Hermione, just tell me what the hell you want me to do and I'll do it! You want me to avoid her? I'll avoid her, I've been avoiding her for sixteen years. You want me to distract her? I'll distract her, my brothers paid me to distract her since I was three. You want me to climb onto the roof and recite the Oxford English Dictionary in Hebrew? That would kind of make it the Oxford Hebrew Dictionary, but bugger it all, I'll do that too! What do you want of me, Hermione?"

Hermione stared at Ginny meaningfully. "I want you to tell her."

Her face darkened. "No. No, that is where I draw the line. I am _not_ going to tell her the truth, there's not a chance in hell, Hermione!"

She started pacing the room, rubbing her forehead. Hermione placed her hand on her shoulder to stop her, and Ginny looked at Hermione imploringly.

"My mother couldn't stand it when I was only eating half a plate every meal for the summer after the Chamber of Secrets. She would die if she found out about the drugs, and the alcohol, and even the bloody _fags_, especially if it had been going on for so long when she thinks she could have stopped it. I can't do that to her, Hermione. I can't put her through that."

Ron sighed. "This is big, Gin. You've got to tell her sometime."

"I will!"

"Sooner the better with Mum, right?"

"Ron, you of all people should know what this will do to her."

"It doesn't matter what it will do to her! She thinks you suffer from depression! For all you know this could be a breath of fresh air for her! She'll be able to help this way. She loves helping."

"I DON'T WANT HELP!" Ginny roared. "I have this under control!"

"Ginny," Harry half-chuckled. "I just had to stop you from shooting a syringe full of heroin into your bloodstream. You went out into the freezing cold to retrieve it."

"With bare feet, thin old pyjama bottoms, and a tee shirt that barely covered your stomach and that you can practically see through, which by the way you should really get rid of," Ron said.

"For the record I have no problem with how she dresses," Harry added. Ron shot him a look of death.

Hermione chimed in. "The point is, you're not as in control as you think you are, Ginny."

"I HAVE PERFECT CONTROL!" Ginny screamed. Harry placed his hand on her shoulder, but she shook it off and moved away from him.

"Calm down, Gin," he said, looking around for some reason unknown to her. Hermione and Ron were exchanging looks.

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, but found herself unable to calm. Her heart was beating wildly, she was hyperventilating, her annoyance with everything was building up, her blood was boiling. A force built up in her that she hadn't felt for years. She felt like she was about to explode.

A weight pressed down on her chest. Someone was squeezing her lungs flat. Her rib cage was closing in. She couldn't breathe. Her throat was closing up. Someone was stuffing an orange down her trachea. Hyperventilating didn't work anymore. She was gasping, trying to catch her breath before it all flew out of her. The weight was getting heavier. The orange was getting larger. She grabbed at her chest, trying to grab hold of the unbearable pain and throw it away. But she couldn't find it.

"Ginny?" some voice said to her.

Her brain vaguely recognized that this was her name. She figured she had to respond, but the orange grew into a watermelon. Her mind could not wrap around a response. The weight on her chest got heavier. She walked backward until her back hit something, and she sank down, down, down against it, not knowing what else to do. She pulled her knees high up to her chest, still clutching the skin that covered her lungs. Her rib cage got smaller. Her lungs collapsed flatter than a piece of parchment. She couldn't think straight. She couldn't breathe right. She couldn't get a sound out of her mouth that didn't sound like she was choking, and frankly, she thought she was.

A loud noise rang through her ears, but she couldn't place it. She was showered with something, and vaguely registered pain, but the ache in her chest, the watermelon in her throat, and the newly lightheadedness that she felt was intense enough to quash any other feeling.

"Ginny? Ginny, c'mon, breathe!" voices were saying. They were screaming things at her, but she didn't know why. What was going on? Her chest pained her. She couldn't close her eyes. She wanted to close her eyes. She wanted to end it all.

She was getting more lightheaded. Every image blurred together. Bright colors. Yellows, pinks, turquoise…bright colors…

She still couldn't breathe. The weight on her chest got heavier. The watermelon in her throat swelled to the size of one of Hagrid's fully-grown, prized pumpkins. The bright colors darkened. Oranges, reds, blues…reds, browns, purples…black, black, black…

…………………………………

"What's going on? Ginny, are you okay?" Harry asked when his girlfriend suddenly started hyperventilating and the candles that were lit began to extinguish suddenly. "Ginny?"

Ron and Hermione exchanged a look again, and when Harry dove forward to help Ginny, they put their hands on his shoulders. All they could do was watch as the room got darker, and Ron's possessions began flying across his bedroom. Ginny's chest sunk inward, like she was slouching forward. She choked on her breath until she grasped her skin through her T-shirt, digging her fingernails in so deep that the thin white cotton of her shirt was stained slightly with red. Her eyes bulging out, still gasping for breath, she backed away until she was against the wall under the window, sinking downward and drawing her knees up to her chest, still clutching at it. Harry screamed things at her, none of which any of them heard.

The frog tank on Ron's windowsill broke, followed by the window, showering all of them with glass. Ginny only opened her mouth wider, looking like she was trying to breathe past something lodged in her throat.

"Ginny? Ginny, c'mon, breathe!" Ron yelled. Harry tried to release himself from their grip.

"LET GO OF ME, DAMN IT!" he roared, then wrenched his arms loose and rushed over to her as she collapsed sideways on the ground, her eyes fluttering closed. Once she was unconscious, the struggled breathing stopped, and air passed through her lungs normally. He slapped her gently, trying to wake her.

"Gin? C'mon, Ginny, please, wake up. Wake the hell up, please!"

Ron picked her up and carried her over to the bed.

"Go get your mother, Ron."

"But—"

"Ron!" Hermione snapped, and he ran out of the room, seeing the tears in her eyes. Harry turned to her.

"What the hell is going on here, Hermione?"

She sighed. "It should be all right, she seemed to just have a panic attack."

"Why would she have a panic attack?"

Hermione shrugged. "All the drugs are finally gone from her body, and she can't take it. She realized what she was about to do earlier and freaked out. Or it could just be more withdrawal. A symptom we don't know about; it's perfectly possible. For that matter it could be the anxiety. Or lack of food or lack of sleep."

"Why is she unconscious? Panic attacks rarely cause unconsciousness, at least no panic attacks I've ever heard of."

"I don't know."

"She's breathing right, but her heart rate is faster than a Firebolt. Is that normal?"

"I don't _know_."

"She's shaking. Is that normal?"

"I don't know!"

"Why won't she wake up?"

"I don't know, Harry, but please stop asking me questions!"

Harry looked up at Hermione, and his eyes looked like those of a little boy who had walked into the kitchen to see his parents fighting viciously. "I'm sorry. I'm just scared."

…………………………………

Harry paced the hospital room, unable to sit still. Hermione, Ron, Mrs. Weasley, Mr. Weasley, Bill, and the twins sat next all around the bed in various positions, but all with similar lost, saddened expressions on their face.

"For godsakes, Harry, stop pacing, you're making me nauseous," Fred snapped. Harry stopped and collapsed against a wall, sliding down it with his eyes closed.

"I'm sorry," Harry mumbled. "I'm sorry, everyone, I didn't want this to happen, I didn't mean for this to happen. All I wanted was for her to be safe, and healthy, but to be happy at the same time. I guess I didn't know what happy was, I guess I put too much pressure on her to be happy and just stressed her out. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry…" His last words were muffled by his shoving his face into his knees and releasing a long, irritated sigh.

"Harry, if I hear you blame yourself for this one more time I am going to put you in a hospital bed too. Shut the hell up, this is not your fault, I don't care what you say, I don't care what you think," Ron said, sneaking a look at the monitor for the millionth time that evening.

Bill stood up. "She's been like this for hours! We still have nothing!"

"Neither do the Healers," Hermione said softly. "Bill, sit down."

"I don't want to sit down. I want to George to call Angelina. I want her to get down here, and I want her to make a real diagnosis about Ginny so then we know she's at least telling the goddamn truth! I want Ginny to wake up! I want booze!" he roared, and ran his hand through his hair. "Excuse me, I gotta get out of here. If she wakes up…if she wakes up I'll be at home."

"I'm going to go Floo Verity," Fred sighed. "Make sure she has the shop under control."

George stood up and followed him to the door. "I'm going to go get Angelina."

"George!" Mrs. Weasley said. "Don't listen to Bill, he's upset."

"Well so am I and I need to have Angelina here, whether she does a single test on Ginny or not, because Angelina is my girlfriend, I love her and she calms me, goddamn it!" he said, not yelling at first, but getting louder and angrier as the sentence went on. "Excuse me."

…………………………………

"This Healer is either an opportunist, washed-up, inept, or all of the three. She's not been eating or sleeping, that's clear, and so it's been affecting her magic. This happens a lot, and it can go one of two ways. Up, or down. Ginny's chose up. It's been sending the levels higher and higher, almost to uncontrollable lengths. There are no physical symptoms to this, and there's usually no way to spot it, but it can often cause panic attacks, anxiety attacks, and, as we are seeing here, short, short comas. She'll be out a day or two, should be fully back after that. Her systems are just trying to regulate, it's not a big deal. Really, it happens all the time. Loads of things can trigger it. Frequent skipping of meals, abnormal sleep patterns, increased stress…and drug withdrawal."

George leaned in and kissed her. "Thanks, Angelina. You've been a great help. Is there any possible way you could switch with Healer Quack over there?"

"Definitely. Once she wakes up, there's some uniform tests to perform, some questions that will really affect her in no way, and then a survey on whether or not your Healer was bubbly enough," Angelina said, rolling her eyes. "They want us to be empathetic. There's patient surveys now. Like we're servers at a restaurant or something. Who really can go from telling one person their going to die to telling someone they are perfectly cured of cancer in less than a minute?"

George kissed her again. "You were plenty empathetic. Healer Quack however, mixed up the charts and accidentally told us that Ginny's third nose would never go away."

She smiled. "Well, she's a very lucky girl. She's going to be just fine. I'll switch to her case, shall I?"

"Please, you have no idea how helpful that would be," Mrs. Weasley said. Angelina left the room, and they all immediately turned on Harry, Ron, and Hermione.

"Drug withdrawal?" Mr. Weasley repeated Angelina's words.

Harry held his hands up in defense. "I learned a long time ago never to ask Ginny about her friends."

Ron looked flustered. "I don't pay attention to my sister's social life! My job is only to make sure no blokes lay their hands on her! I don't—_drugs_…"

Of course, all faces turned to Hermione, who rolled her eyes. "What makes you think I would know anything about Ginny's life?"

"You two girl talk enough," Fred mumbled.

"Girl talk usually consists of what boys you've done recently, not what drugs, thank you very much," Hermione snapped.

"This is not a time to be turning on each other, this is a time to—boys she's done?" Mr. Weasley chimed in. Hermione sighed.

"For heaven's sake," she said. "The point we are trying to make here is that Ginny keeps her life secret from us. She gives us just enough details and nothing else. We managed not to know for over three years that she wasn't going to her classes. How would we know if she was doing any drugs?"

"Ginny's smart," George said. "She's a smart kid, she wouldn't ever do _drugs_. Right?"

"Yeah," Mrs. Weasley said, eyeing Harry and Mr. Weasley strangely. "Ginny's smart."

…………………………………

"What did he do to her, Harry?"

She and Harry were alone in the room; everyone else was taking a dinner break or something of the sort. They, however, refused to leave.

"I don't know, Mrs. Weasley."

"That diary left a mark. She's smarter, but something is not right in her head."

"If only she knew," Harry said. He took a deep breath, then continued. "At least, if it is drugs, she's quitting."

"What?"

"Angelina said drug withdrawal. That means she's quitting. Maybe, this is assuming she was taking them in the first place, she stopped before they did any real damage."

"Maybe."

"You're still worried?"

"I'm absolutely terrified, Harry," Mrs. Weasley said, truthfully. She shook her head. "As a mother my only job is to protect my children with my life and raise them to be good and safe and healthy. Today I was faced with the possibility that my daughter does or at one time did drugs. Excuse me if I don't don my clown outfit and juggle flaming batons immediately, but that's a lot to take in."

Harry remained silent.

"She does, doesn't she, Harry?" she said. "You know, and she made you swear never to tell me. She met some people when she was skiving. They got her into drugs. You're trying to get her to quit, and today she came back covered in snow and blood and dirt because she buried something and got hurt trying to dig it up and take it."

"That's not true."

"Which part, Harry? Which part isn't true?"

He didn't answer immediately, but he didn't have to, as Mrs. Weasley spoke over him when he began the first word.

"I failed her, Harry."

"You didn't fail anyone, Mrs. Weasley," he told her firmly. "No matter what you think, no matter what your children do, you are the best mother alive. You would die for your children, your greatest fear is seeing them hurt. Mrs. Weasley, I have never seen you when you were not worrying about one of your children. Everything you do, you have them in mind. You are a great mother.

"This was Ginny's decision, okay? If she did anything, anything at all, it was her decision. Riddle screwed her up, all right? He screwed her up. There's nothing you could have done about that, nothing at all. This was her decision. Everything she does it her decision, no matter what you do."

She was spared from an answer when Ron and Hermione came bursting through the doors.

"Charlie's here."

Mrs. Weasley stood up to see her second oldest son speeding through the doors and skidding to a stop next to Ginny's bed. He looked all around at all the monitors and at Ginny and seemed to be assessing the situation before he shook his head and scoffed.

"What the hell happened?"

They told him what Angelina had explained to them.

"So she's gonna be okay? She'll be fine?"

"It's Ginny, Charlie," Harry said. "She'll pull herself out of anything without a scratch, leaving us all amazed. Just like she always does."

He nodded. "I suppose so," he sighed, then looked around. "Everyone is somewhere in this hospital I'm assuming, right? Dad? Bill? The twins? All here?"

"Yeah. Bill left in a rage a while ago, but…Bill, right?" Ron mumbled.

"And…" he shot a concerned look at his mother, who then walked straight out of the room, mumbling about needing air. "So…Percy's not here?"

"Dad talked to him," Ron said. "Dad told him what was going on, but he didn't come."

"He feels that strongly toward us?" Charlie raged through gritted teeth. "He feels so strongly toward us that he won't even visit his own sister when she's unconscious in the hospital? What the hell is wrong with him? I ought to go down to the Ministry and kick some sense into him all myself. Fuck, I think I might just do that. Want to come with, Ron?"

"Let me get my jacket."

"No one is going to kick sense into anyone!" Harry said.

"You should want to follow us, Harry."

"No, I shouldn't. If anyone would want to kick sense into Percy it would be Ginny. She'll let you guys come. You can beat the shit out of him while he's still writhing from her Bat-Bogey Hex. You know how upset Ginny will be if she found out you kicked Percy's arse while she wasn't conscious."

"Oh yeah. I guess you're right," Charlie said, collapsing into a chair next to Ginny's bed. "I want to do _some_thing though. I feel so damn useless just sitting here. I mean, what happened? Why is she like this, what did this to her?"

"We told you. Her magic levels went insane. There was no stopping it. She's stressed out from all this schoolwork she's been doing."

"What are you talking about? It's no worse than anyone else, and Ginny's one of the most relaxed people I know, she's always been."

"She's probably relaxed because she hasn't been going to any classes for over three years."

Charlie's head swooped up at the speed of light, and he chuckled.

"What? She got twelve O.W.L.s! She's taking nine N.E.W.T. classes. How could she do that if she wasn't going to class? For over three years, seriously?"

"She got twelve O.W.L.s, and she's on the register for all those nine N.E.W.T. classes, but she's not taking them. She hadn't been to a single N.E.W.T. level class before this month."

"That's impossible."

"Not impossible. Not with Ginny, Charlie," Ron said. "We're talking about Ginny, Ginny who learned to read, write, and do arithmetic before she was three, and learned all by herself at that. She memorized the names of every single spell in _The Standard Book of Spells, Grade 1, Grade 2, _and _Grade 3_ by the time she was five. By the time she was six she was breaking into our broom cupboard and riding our brooms in turn. When she was eight she had read every single book in the house. Also at eight she learned how to make money from the Muggles in the village on the sly, then spend it on whatever she wanted. To this day, Mum and Dad still don't know she ever did that. Now she's at the top of all her classes without even ever attending them. She's a genius, Charlie, nothing is impossible with her."

…………………………………

"Fred went to go get Bill, all right? He'll be here in a second."

"I hate hospitals."

"I know, love."

"They're dull and drab and the wallpaper sucks and it's humid and it smells like a foot and the beds suck and everything is beeping and the lights are always too bright and the curtains suck and the floor is always too cold and you haven't felt cold until you've met the Assistant Healers and the linens suck and it's always so boring and everyone's always rushing in and out like you're gonna die any second and the color schemes suck and you have to take all these potions and I haven't even _started_ on the atmosphere! Hospitals make you feel like you're gonna die even if you just have the dragon pox, it's always cold, and it feels like morbidity!"

Ginny had complaining about the hospital since she woke up a half hour ago. Harry, Mrs. Weasley, and Mr. Weasley stayed constantly at her side.

"You'll be out soon, Ginny. Angelina just has to perform a few tests, ask a few questions. Then you'll be able to go," Mr. Weasley said.

Ginny made a face. "Did I mention how much I _hate_ hospitals? If there is one thing in this whole world that I hate more than anything, it would have to be hospitals."

"Really? You hide it so well," Harry said. "Look, you'll be out of here before you know it. All she'll be asking you is a few questions to confirm the diagnosis, and make sure it's not abuse or anything, which I'm pretty sure, seeing as the Healer is Angelina, she already knows."

There was a knock on the door, and then Angelina walked in, smiling.

"Hey Ginny, how are you feeling?"

"Empathetic, that you have to spend your career in one of these places," Ginny said.

"Not liking the hospital?"

"Please don't send her in that rant again," Mr. Weasley said. Angelina smiled.

"Well, it's just a few questions. Since you are a minor, one adult must be present, but all others must leave if you so wish."

Ginny shrugged. "You can all stay. What do I care?"

"All right. For starters, is there any abuse occurring in your home? Parents? Brothers?" she grinned at the last question. Ginny shook her head.

"No."

"Any abusive relationships? Friends? Boyfriend?" she asked, and everyone's eyes snapped toward Harry, besides Ginny, who smiled, shook her head, and said, "No."

"Good," Angelina continued. "Have you been eating regularly? No skipping meals, no purging after eating?"

"Every once in a great while I'll skip lunch, but Harry, Ron, and Hermione always force something down my throat otherwise."

"Any strange sleeping patterns?"

"I'm sleeping at night now. I used to be semi-nocturnal, but I've become human now."

"Okay. Have you recently ceased alcohol consumption?" she asked in a speedy way, almost as if she felt the question needn't be asked.

Ginny looked over at Harry, and answered hesitantly, "Yes."

Mr. and Mrs. Weasley both snapped their heads up and stared at her, appalled. Ginny kept her eyes focused on her hands, and Harry stared the opposite way of her and her parents. Angelina looked shocked, and made a small note on her clipboard.

"Right, well…have you recently skipped or ceased the taking of any narcotics, or potions prescribed by a Healer?"

Ginny took a deep breath, and looked over at Harry again, but he still would not look at her. "Yes, I ceased taking."

"Which?" Angelina asked, assuming it was some potion prescribed by a regular family Healer.

"Um…marijuana? And…heroin…cocaine, and ecstasy," she said, the last two very quickly, seeing Harry tense up at the newly acquired knowledge.

"Any others? Even experimenting?" Angelina said. Seeing her hesitate, she said, "Ginny, this is only for information. There will be no issues with law or anything. Just information. We need to know this, Ginny. Anything you've experimented with, anything prescribed by your Healer."

Ginny pulled her legs up and buried her face in them. "LSD. Uh…crack, I guess, just once. Prescribed by Healer…I take some allergy stuff, some for headaches, and…er, well…" She shot a quick look over at her father, who looked only confused, compared to her mother's rage. Looking straight down at her legs and turning bright red, she whispered, "Birth control."

Her father went purple. He balled up his fists and stared at the wall. Harry, on the other side of Ginny than Mr. Weasley was, turned white as a ghost. His eyes bulged out and he took a defensive position. Ginny looked down until her hair curtained over her face.

Angelina sighed. "Okay, I think I've caused enough destruction for one day. I'll just go get your discharge papers."

And she hurried out.

There was silence for a moment, and then:

"GINEVRA MOLLY WEASLEY, WHAT IN THE NAME OF MERLIN IS WRONG WITH YOU?"

_A/n Ah, Yuletide family love. _


	6. Something's Gone Wrong Again

_a/n so by the way, I'm sorry for not updating. But for some reason everything was hard to type, especially, believe it or not, the last two sentences. I couldn't decide whether to make that happen yet._

"Mum—"

"Marijuana? Ecstasy? Cocaine? _Heroin_?" she screeched. "Let's see all these others you've tried, too! LSD! Crack? Ginevra Weasley, what is wrong with you, what could have possessed you to do such a thing as drugs?! You know better than that!"

Ginny shook her head, ripped her head up, and roared, "YOU KNOW _EXACTLY_ WHAT POSSESSED ME, MOTHER!"

"Ginevra Molly Weasley, You-Know-Who is _no_ excuse for this!"

"Oh, he isn't? Mum, all those letters you got from the school in my second year? Because of Tom Riddle. All the detentions? Because of Tom Riddle. I had a fag the first month I was back because of Tom Riddle! I started drinking my third month back because of Tom Riddle! Someone passed me a blunt near the middle of the year! I thought it was a cigarette! I got high and went to Transfiguration, Mum, I turned a beetle into a button and couldn't stop laughing! Because of TOM RIDDLE!"

"That's no excuse for this!"

"He messed me up, all right? Something is not right with me. I don't know exactly, but I can't get rid of him, Mum. I know it's not really an excuse but…I needed to get rid of him. It was a distraction, all right? That's all it meant to me for a long time. When I drank, when I smoked, when I was high…he was gone. His voice wasn't in my head anymore, he wasn't telling me what to do any longer. I needed that, and I just…went overboard. I got addicted and I couldn't _stop_. I knew it was bad, I knew it was dangerous and sick and I knew I had a problem, but I couldn't stop.

"These people were telling me things, they were telling me I was better than school, that I was better than all of it. They were telling me I was too smart to waste my life in class. I knew it was wrong. I knew they were wrong. I knew was wasting my life more sitting in an empty classroom at night getting high than sitting in a full classroom during the day listening a professor tell other people things I already knew. I knew they only had bad intentions but I couldn't _stop_. You have to believe me, Mum, you have to know that I realize how wrong this was, I realize how horrible it was, and I realized it a long time ago."

"Well then why didn't you stop?"

"I couldn't. I tried. I threw out all my heroin. I started going through withdrawal and I thought what the hell's the point? In desperation, I saw no reason to really quit. In desperation, I didn't see what it was doing to me. But…Harry."

"Harry?"

"When he found out, he made me stop. He said he couldn't be with me if I did drugs. Finally, I had a reason to stop. I had to be with Harry."

"What a lovely story," Mrs. Weasley said. "Now we can discuss how stupid you are."

Ginny chuckled. "They're all going to find out, aren't they?"

"Who?"

"Bill. Charlie. The twins. They're going to find out what an idiot I am. Percy will if he ever deigns to come back. Fleur's been dying to get back at me for a long time, all that shit I put her through. I'll be exiled from all them just like I got exiled from my friends."

"Those people weren't your friends, Gin," Harry snapped. "Pace? She wasn't your friend. Michael almost put you in a hospital when you tried to do right and keep him away from that life. They aren't your _friends_, Ginny. They're horrible people. They were horrible to you. You were just high, you didn't realize."

"I know, Harry."

"What do you mean Michael almost put you in a hospital? Who's Michael?"

"A boy I was dating for a while. He got into the scene when he found out about my habits. I tried to stop him…but he beat the crap out of me. Luckily Owl and Raccoon hadn't started to get wasted yet. Otherwise it would have been worse."

"Owl and Raccoon?"

Harry shook his head and said, "It's better if you don't question the nicknames, trust me."

"You!" Mrs. Weasley said, as if she just realized he was in the room. "You've been lying to me all weekend! You knew and you never told me, even when I directly asked you!"

"Mother, do not fish information from my boyfriend! If you want to know something about me, ask me."

"Well right now I want to know something about Harry, so I'm asking Harry."

They all turned to him, and he, pale and jumpy, said, "I felt it was something Ginny had to tell you herself. All weekend I had worked to get her to tell you, Hermione and Ron too. Besides, whenever we answered you, technically, we were not lying. We made sure of that. We just wanted Ginny to tell you about that past."

Mrs. Weasley took a deep breath and stared straight at her daughter. "Arthur, Harry, could you please leave us alone?"

…………………………………

Harry cleared his throat. "You were really quiet in there."

Mr. Weasley shrugged. "I learned a long time ago never to involve myself when Ginny and her mother are fighting."

"That seems prudent," Harry agreed. They were silent for a minute, then Harry turned in his chair to face Mr. Weasley. "Mr. Weasley, I just was to tell you that I have never had sex with your daughter. Or even came close to it. I don't want to rush her. I want to go at her pace."

Mr. Weasley turned to face Harry as well. "Harry, let me give it to you straight."

"I would appreciate that, Mr. Weasley."

"You make my daughter happy. Happier than I've ever seen her. If she is willing to give up the most addictive substances in the world for you, then you must be making her happier than she's ever been. And I know that if you're willing to spend this whole time with her, you're not only loyal to her, but you care about her as much as she cares about you."

"Mr. Weasley, I love her."

He scrutinized Harry for a moment. "I don't doubt that, Harry."

…………………………………

Mrs. Weasley stared at her daughter for a moment after her husband and Harry left the room. Ginny was staring at her knees, her hair curtaining over her face, swinging her legs back and forth. Every once in a while she would sniff or shrug her shoulders backward.

"Does your back hurt?" Mrs. Weasley asked quietly, for lack of anything to say. She didn't want to yell anymore. Her yelling was what made Ginny incapable of telling her this before. Of telling her about the drugs, about the birth control, about Tom Riddle.

"Yes. Always. It's…um…the withdrawal."

Mrs. Weasley nodded. Ginny did not change a thing about her position, though, so she did not see it.

"So…how is the withdrawal?"

Ginny's head popped up, a slightly hostile look on her face. "Get it over with, Mum. Yell at me. Tell me how stupid I am."

Mrs. Weasley shook her head. "I don't want to yell."

"Well I want you to. I don't want you to stand there and talk to me about symptoms like you're going to help me through this. Tell me what an idiot I am."

"But…I want to, Ginny, I want to help you through this. I'm your mother. You're doing the right thing. You were being stupid, you were being an idiot, but…you're being smart now. Brave. To go through this all. I want to help you."

Ginny sighed, still looking to some extent angry. "Fine. I'm only tired when it's time to be awake. I'm only hungry when it's impossible to get food. Like my body knows and it's torturing me. My back always hurts. My head always hurts. I'm always shaking, or freezing, or both. I'm seeing things that aren't there. I think something is going to hurt me, or that I'm being followed, when I'm perfectly safe and no one is around. I'm angry all the time and at the most random things, that would never even bother me before. It's like I'm going insane."

"Well, if there's anything I can do…"

"Thank you," Ginny said immediately, cutting her off. "But, Mum…I have to do this. Alone. This is something I need to do. You've already helped me. Believe me. Please."

Mrs. Weasley nodded. "Okay. Okay, I will."

"Can I talk to Harry for a while? Would you mind?"

"Not at all."

…………………………………

Ginny stood up when Harry walked in the door.

"Hi."

"Hi," Harry mumbled, stuffing his hands into his jacket pockets.

"I think we need to talk about some things. Would you please sit?" she asked. He sat in the chair next to the bed, and she stood in front of him. After a long breath, she said, "Just please know, I never want to hurt you."

"Cut the crap, Gin," Harry scoffed. "Ecstasy? _Cocaine_? You never told me about that stuff, or at least not the truth. What happened to ecstasy not being your style?"

"It—I lied."

"And coke giving you such a nosebleed you couldn't enjoy it?"

"That's true. Then, however, instead of snorting, I mainlined. Intravenous injections don't tend to give you nosebleeds."

"What the hell? Why didn't you tell me about that? I thought you wanted to be honest with me, I thought you wanted to tell me everything I deserved to know! I deserve to know this, Ginny, I deserve to know what illegal narcotics you're pumping into your body! For that matter, what legal narcotics you're pumping into your body! When the hell did you start taking birth control potions, Gin?"

She sighed. "It's dangerous, okay? To be high all the time, to be drunk all the time, and to be around other people that are just as fucked up as you are. It means that there are risks, especially if you used to date one of them and rejected them severely at one point. I started taking it for precaution. Just in case, at some point of time, I would need it." She sat on his lap and stared into his eyes. "Harry James Potter, I _never_ needed it. Even wasted I have always been completely devoted to you. Wasted, young, dating another guy—I've only kissed. Sometimes barely that."

"You promise?"

"Harry, this you can trust me on. I know, I lied to you about the drugs, I know I lied to you on a load of things, but this one you can trust me on. Unless I was so smashed that I didn't even know, which I sincerely doubt because I think at some point the truth would be out, I have never, ever had sex with anyone. The birth control is just precaution."

"Swear?"

"Cross my heart, hope to die, shoot a hex at my eye."

"Okay…now go back to the cocaine and ecstasy. Seriously? Why'd you lie about that? I mean, you had already told us about heroin, we couldn't have gotten that bad."

"No, you could've. Harry, you did not have a mirror that day. When I told you I smoked weed I thought you were gonna cry. And the heroin? I'd seen you look happier on Hallowe'en. It killed me to see you that way, Harry. Absolutely killed me. I just couldn't bear to tell you I knew people who were involved with other drugs beside those two. My gosh, Harry, I'm sorry, but you must believe me I couldn't do it. I couldn't stand it."

"You lied to me, love."

"Ha! All is forgiven."

"What? How do you know that?"

"You _never_ call me 'love' when you're angry at me or disappointed in me or anything like that. So _ha_. You forgive me."

Harry smiled. "Yes, I do forgive you for lying, I just want to know why you did."

"I don't _know._ I love you, Harry, you know I love you. For a long time, I've loved you. I'm not very good at that, though. I'm not good at sharing information with the people I love. You'll have to bear with me for a while here. My whole life I have had to hide things in order to remain the way I was. I have had to hide things from my brothers, my parents, my teachers—the closest I've ever gotten to sharing information is drunken confessions to my equally smashed friends. I don't know how to do that, Harry. So please just bear with me when I find this all out."

He stared into her eyes and sighed, thinking about what she had just said. To be honest, he knew little about that subject as well; no one had given half a damn about him or what happened to him his whole life, unless it involved his fuck-ups, until he found out he was a wizard. Then, he shared his life with Hagrid, Ron, and Hermione, and sometimes even Dumbledore. And everyone knew about his past, sometimes more so than he himself.

Still, he knew that her whole life, she hadn't been able to talk to anyone about anything without feeling claustrophobic. And while his life had been boring and meaningless, hers was filled with adventure. While his forced silence had little effect on his life, hers had driven her to the point of being possessed by a diary and unable to tell anyone about it due to fear of being caged. It had indirectly caused her to resort to drugs and alcohol.

When he really, really thought about it—as cliché as it sounded to his ears—behind that exterior of hers, behind that strong, tough, sarcastic shell, she was fragile. She was a tiny, scared little girl, easily broken, easily molded, with a hundred fears and worries written on the underside of her skin. While she seemed to be the fearless, hard as diamond girl, she was the opposite. There was the claustrophobia she felt in every sense sans physical, the fear of failure, fear of rejection, fear of people knowing how she felt or how she saw the world, and thousands of others so serious and yet so ignored that he doubted she would ever even realize them herself.

"Hey, Gin?"

"Yes, Harry?"

"When you face a boggart…what do you see?"

Ginny took a deep breath, let it go, and stood up off Harry's lap before speaking. "A mirror," she said simply.

"A mirror? What's in the reflection?"

"Me. Just how I am, just how I am standing at that moment. Nothing at all is different about me in that mirror. It's just a reflection. And yet, in the same way, everything has changed. Everything. I don't know how to explain it. But it is the most frightening thing in the world to me, seeing myself in the mirror like that."

"Were you high when you faced the boggart?"

Ginny shook her head. "No, actually. I was coherent. Completely."

"Really?"

"Yeah, I remember. Because there were some people around me, and when I saw the mirror, they thought I was high. They asked me, are you high? When I said no, they all laughed, not even seeing anything. All they saw was just…a mirror."

"What did you see?"

Ginny took a deep breath. "I think I was showing myself what I was becoming. What I was turning myself into."

Harry shook his head. "I don't think that's it."

"You don't?" Ginny asked curiously. "What do you think it means?"

"I think it means that you were more showing yourself what you already were."

Ginny's face was the painting of confusion before she sat back down on Harry's lap. It scared him how little she weighed.

"What do you mean? What I already was?"

"Gin, you're not…as strong as you think you are. Ron sees a spider as a boggart. Hermione sees failure. People see loved ones dying and blood and snakes and thousands of other common, clear things that perfectly describe their worst fear. You? Ginny, you see a mirror. I'm no psychological expert, but love, that's not exactly—"

"Normal?" Ginny said quietly, looking at the ground.

Harry shrugged. "I was going to say a good display of self-esteem, but yeah, normal fits too."

"So…you think I have bad self-esteem?"

He wrapped his arms around her waist and kissed her temple. "You have more to work on than only giving up drugs and alcohol. Gin, you're not…you're fragile, all right?"

"Don't accidentally crash me into a wall while moving me up stairways."

Harry sighed. "Ginny, I meant that you couldn't tell anyone about the diary, even when you knew it was hurting you. You were afraid to."

"I didn't want everyone to think I was stupid."

"You also didn't want everyone to protect you even more than they already did."

"I don't like cages. I don't want a hand to cover my eyes whenever life gets scary. I don't want a hand clutching mine when I have to cross the road. It's not how I want to live, Harry. I don't want to be one of those people who moves onto their own and keeps looking for that hand."

…………………………………

As soon as Mrs. Weasley stumbled out of the hospital room, she fell into her husband's arms, sobbing. He cradled her in his arms, rocking her back and forth to try to soothe her.

"She's done drugs, Arthur," she mumbled into his chest.

"I know. But there's nothing we can do about it now, dear. We just have to help her through this tough time in her life without strangling her. Without babying her."

"But she—"

"She has a boyfriend who loves her, who she loves, who takes care of her. She has her older brother at school with her, she has a myriad of friends, she has an owl that she can use to call upon us or any of her brothers whenever she needs to do so. Molly, she is sixteen years old. We can't hold her hand forever."

Mrs. Weasley released an enormous sob and squeezed her husband tighter. "How are we going to tell them? How are we going to tell them their sister destroyed herself for years without any of us knowing?"

"We just have to tell them, Molly. Rip off the bandage, as the Muggles would say."

"I'm scared, Arthur. She's been through so much, he's still…"

Arthur looked into her eyes, ceasing her speech. "We need to tell her."

"No!"

"She's sixteen, Molly, she needs to know about herself."

"Tom Riddle made her turn into that person, I don't want her to relapse!"

"She won't relapse. She has Harry. She has her brothers. She has her parents. She has Hermione. Her _family_, Molly."

…………………………………

"I should probably go to my room and not come out for a very long time," Ginny said quietly when the group walked into the back door of the Burrow. They had all been completely quiet for a long time, and all her brothers had been staring almost angrily at her since they found out. She grabbed Harry's arm to try to pull him along with her, but her mother piped up, making the first sound in two hours that came from anyone but Ginny.

"Your father and I want to talk to Harry. Everyone else please go."

They all nodded, and Bill and Charlie Apparated away to Bill's place and Fred and George Apparated away to the joke shop. Ron and Hermione fled upstairs, and Ginny trudged behind them, scared for Harry and ashamed of herself for causing her family this despair.

…………………………………

"Is everything okay, Mrs. Weasley?"

"We want to tell her."

"About…?" Harry said, but reading the looks on their faces, the answer flew into his head like an owl. "Oh…"

"We want you to be there when we tell her. She'll be angry and confused and you'll be able to calm her."

…………………………………

"Ginny?" Mrs. Weasley said, knocking on the door. She let out an indistinct mumble from inside, which they took as "come in."

When they opened the door, she was sitting on the bed, reading a book. Upon seeing that Harry and both of her parents were standing in her doorway, she closed the book and chucked it away.

"What's going on?"

"Can we talk to you?"

"What's going on?"

"Ginny," Harry said, "you have to stay as calm and rational as you possibly can as we tell you this and afterward."

"What's going on?" she demanded.

"We all know you haven't been the same since the diary," Mr. Weasley said. "None of us can deny that fact."

"You have said yourself that it's messed you up," Harry told her quietly.

"You have to understand this is hard for us. We don't know how to tell you this," Mrs. Weasley said.

"Tell me what? What is going on?"

"He's still there, Ginny," Harry told her. "He's still inside you."

Her eyes flashed over with anger and fear. "What do you mean?"

"I mean that he left a part of him in you."

"Like he left a part in the diary?"

"No," Harry said firmly. "Not at all. Just some memories. He's left part of his memories in you. Some of his power. But it's more than that."

Mr. Weasley spoke up then, unable to keep it from her any longer. "When it all comes down to it, there is an undeveloped Tom Riddle inside you."

She turned to her parents, fire blazing in her eyes. "You've known this?"

"Ginny—"

"No!" she yelled, standing up. "For five years you've known this! You've known this and you never told me!"

"You were young, you were traumatized."

"I thought I was going mad! I was hearing his voice, I was having flashes of memories that I'd never had before, I was experiencing memories I didn't remember!"

"Ginny, I know, it must have been hard, but you were twelve years old. It would have been too much."

"I'm sick of you trying to protect me!" Ginny roared. "For five years you have known something about me that I would have loved to know and you _kept it from me_! So all this time I was too smart for my classes, that wasn't me. I was so bored learning things in class because I'd already learned them, because Tom Riddle had learned them? All these memories of things that never happened to me, they happened to Tom Riddle? I THOUGHT I WAS INSANE!"

"Ginny, please, we didn't mean any sort of harm—"

"NO, _MOTHER_, NO! NO, THIS ONE YOU DON'T GET TO DEFEND! I HAVE A DORMANT PART OF TOM RIDDLE IN ME! YOU DO NOT GET TO DEFEND THE FACT THAT YOU DID NOT TELL ME THAT!"

"Ginny, I'm _sorry_."

"Who else knows, huh? Who knows this about me, hmm? Giopedo, the man that rides around Ottery St. Catchpole on a bike and sharpens the Muggles' knives? Does he know I have a dormant piece of Tom Riddle in me?"

"Please, love, calm down," Harry said.

"I WILL NOT CALM DOWN!" Ginny squealed. "NO!"

"It really is best if you stay calm, dear."

"What do you know about what's best for me, Mother? You think it's best for me to know nothing about who I am and what's going on with me. Do you know what? I'm done with you. I'm done with this. Tomorrow I am going back to school and nothing you do can stop me. In fact I'm writing Professor Dumbledore right now to arrange it. I'm going to get far out of this fucking place. Fuck you. Fuck all of you."

"Ginevra Molly Weasley, do _not_ talk to us that way!"

"Why not? You've always wanted an open, honest relationship with me. At least you always say so. Apparently, however, that's one-sided, seeing as for the last five years you've held just about the single most important piece of information about my life from me. But whatever. Forget it."

"Ginny, really, please, you're overreacting to all this."

"AND YOU!" Ginny snarled. "What happened to you loving me? What happened to 'we can't keep secrets from each other'? I can't believe what I've done for you, and you keep this from me? I knew you couldn't love me, I knew it was too good to be true. Where's that heroin I had earlier? Know what, forget it, I have more somewhere around here…"

Harry had tried to hold himself in, but as soon as she said those words, he exploded. "What you've done for _me_? What about what I've done for you? I've saved your life. More than once! I saved you from Tom Riddle when you were stupid enough to write to a diary that wrote back!"

As soon as the words left his mouth he wanted to take them back. He started to, even, just as Ginny slapped him hard across the face.

"Fuck you."

"Ginny, please—"

She slapped him again, tears prickling her eyes. "_Fuck you_."

As she walked out of the room, Harry called after her, "Well I guess I can, because you're on birth control. _Another thing_¸ by the way, that I DID NOT KNOW ABOUT!"

…………………………………

Ginny sat in the safety of the trees, crying her eyes out, watching the owl fly out of sight with her letter to Dumbledore.

She reached into the box next to her, pulled out the hose, tied it around her arm, and stuck the needle into her skin.


	7. Let's Get Fucked Up and Die

It was not even twelve hours later that Harry roamed the halls of Hogwarts, asking portraits, people, statues and ghosts if they'd seen Ginny. He screamed and yelled and searched every single classroom, coming upon too many scenes he wished never crossed his line of vision, sniffing around for smoke. Lavender Brown, Parvati Patil, and several other random girls he didn't know the name of claimed to have not seen her in the girls' dormitories, bathrooms, or anywhere else. She was not in the library, not on the Quidditch pitch, in the sky, in the changing rooms, anywhere on grounds, or in Hagrid's hut. Hagrid was looking all over the place for her, along with a guild of statues, ghosts, students and portraits that owed Harry favors. She was not on the Marauder's Map, and he hated himself for showing her how to make herself Unplottable.

He thought of her old friends, realized that besides Michael he knew none of their real names. He remembered Isaac, Gabriel, and Heather, saw they were not on the map either. When he went to the Room of Requirement, it opened to an empty room no matter what he asked. Suddenly he remembered that corridor on the third floor, the one less than twenty people knew about, all students. Not even the ghosts knew of it, no paintings hung in the corridor.

A frightening thing was that not even the Marauders knew about it.

Harry rocketed down to the third floor, skidded around corners and through tapestries and up and under strange things trying to get to where he wanted. He didn't know if she would keep to her promise of heroin intake, but if she did, then she would most definitely be with her "friends" in their hideout.

He dug through his memory—there was _some_ special knock they used. For the life of him he could not remember it, but knew that if he did not use the special knock, he'd be fucked.

As soon as he turned a corner, he knew he was in the right place. He could smell a mixture of smoke that made his eyes water and his throat dry, that made him cough and cringe until he grew slightly akin to it. Noise permeated from the cracks of the door, and raucous laughter layered over screamed words that molded together incoherently from different voices and speedy sentences. He sauntered up to the door from which the haze was leaking, and dug through his memory for just a moment longer.

All he could remember was three, and so he knocked three times. The noise inside stopped. He heard footsteps come close, mumbles of shock and confusion.

"What the bloody hell do you want?"

His heart panged when he heard her voice, slurred and stumbling, and it took a little work to decipher the exact meaning of her message. "I want to talk to you, to apologize, to explain."

"I can't talk right now, I'm stoned."

Laughter erupted inside, but Harry didn't find it funny. He rapped on the door again and tried to hush the noise inside. It didn't work.

"Please, Ginny, I'm sorry, just let me explain."

"No! You kept from me a whole thing of something that was important and I was sad from the things that hurt me."

"Gin, you're fucking wasted, just get out here so we can talk, _please_."

"Go the fuck away, mate, she doesn't want to talk to you!" another voice called, just as slurred as Ginny's, but with less stumbling. "Lighter always knows what she wants. She's got a head and it's connected to her shoulders."

"Yeah, go away!" the chorus of voices echoed, and his soul was crushed right there and then.

"I'm not leaving," he said, unsure of whether or not they heard him. "I'm not leaving," he mumbled again to himself.

…………………………………

Mrs. Weasley slammed down a pot and prodded the stove with such force that flames erupted two feet high. It was not the first of mishaps that had occurred while she had been making dinner that day, and Hermione placed a hand on her shoulder.

"Perhaps I should do this, Mrs. Weasley," Hermione said, and Mrs. Weasley nodded, stepping aside, running her fingers through her graying hair once more. Ron stood and sat her down in a chair at the kitchen table.

"I'll get you some tea, Mum."

"You don't have to be doing all this, you two."

Ron looked at his mother. "I don't know what happened, but something is wrong around here. Harry took off without a word and not letting us come with. Dad's not been around for hours. Ginny screamed at you for an hour while packing her things before sneaking out and catching the Knight Bus to go to Hogsmeade so she could go back to school. You're setting things on fire. Something is wrong, and we're just trying to help fix it in any way we can."

Mrs. Weasley put a hand on her son's cheek. "Look how mature you're gotten."

…………………………………

"Hey, Lighter…" someone mumbled from inside. "We're the only ones still conscious."

"Fuck, Pace, you're right…shit…fuck…whadda you…we…we do now what? …What?" Ginny's voice slurred back.

"You're fucking…fucked up, Lighter!"

"Look who's talking, fucker, you went through three packs of blunts today and drank like three bottles."

"You don't even know how to count, Lighter! I went through three…something or maybe this or that or something or…"

"Fucking wasted…" Ginny mumbled. "C'mon, what's going on…let's, uh, let's get them back…the sun is, um, it's coming up we should…brightness…pain… hurts…"

"Yes, genius, pain hurts. What the fuck's wrong with you?" Pace said, and the sounds of clanking glass and paper and cardboard crunching all melded together. "I'll get these bastards to their dormitories, you just clean this shit up, okay?"

"Okay…"

"You used to be able to do this, before you went clean."

"Hey, I'm conscious, ain't I? Better than any of these guys, and like Owl and Raccoon started before me…no I started before me…them…they…after…"

A sound of flesh contacted with flesh rang through, and Ginny mumbled a string of obscenities.

"_Clean this shit up._"

"Yeah, Pace."

"Stay awake, Lighter. Can you do that?"

"Yeah…yeah, Pace," she said, and the flesh-to-flesh sound rang through again. "Damn, I got it Pace, calm the fuck down! Fucking dust in your joint…"

The door vibrated and a large slam sounded. "_Shut the fuck up_."

A minute later the door opened and a train of limp bodies hovered through, followed by Pace, who had a cigarette sticking out of her mouth. She looked down at Harry, who stood up at that moment with his wand out, and laughed, blowing smoke out her nostrils.

"Lighter, he's still here."

She floated the bodies away and followed, not paying Harry any attention after that. He stood up and walked into the room, the floor of which was littered with empty liquor bottles and potion bottles and pill bottles and cigarette cartons and cardboard boxes and broken glasses. Ginny didn't look at him, just scavenged around for anything salvageable in the midst of the mess.

"Ginny—"

"I told you to go away!" Ginny screeched, staring up at him. Her lip was bleeding and she had a blackened eye. He gasped.

"What did Pace do to you?"

"She's on fucking superweed, it makes her crazy. Goddamnit," she mumbled as she cut her hand on broken glass. "There's a spell to fix hand blood-ing cuts." She took out her wand and pointed it, backwards, at her hand. "Tiddlywink. Huh. That's a funny word. Tiddlywink. Isn't it supposed to be two-more? Tiddlywinks. Yes, that's better. Tiddlywink_s_."

"Don't do that," Harry said, sitting her down on top of the desk, regretting that he never learned healing spells. He grabbed a box off the floor and transfigured it into a bandage. "You probably shouldn't perform any spells when you're wasted like this."

"Thank you, nice man."

"Ginny, I just want to apologize," he said, wiping up enough of the blood to wrap the bandage securely around her hand, then turning to clean up the room. "It was wrong for me to hide all that from you; you needed to know about it. And those things I said to you were horrible. There's no excuse for that."

She stared at him as he cleaned up and said, "I'm not mad at you, you know that right?"

He turned around, surprised. "You're not?"

She was patting her bandage with her other arm, fascinated seemingly by the blood. "No. I'm not mad at you, I'm not mad at my parents. It's—I'm mad at me, for being so stupid. And I'm mad at Tom Riddle for being inside me. And I'm mad at me more for being more stupid and running straight here and getting fucked up. And now I'm tired. I want sleep. Mmm. Sleep is good. Sleep is happy. Happy sleep."

Harry, having cleaned up the room, now picked her up in his arms as she fell asleep and carried her upstairs, knowing that he would not let that comment drop.

As he walked to the seventh floor, carrying his girlfriend (he hoped he could still call her that) in his arms, he recalled a moment not long ago that he was doing the same thing: carry the sleeping, shivering, petite mass, all four hands with blood on them, as she had just been so upset as to think about relapsing. This time, however, he had a thousand regrets that told him he hadn't been able to stop her that time.

_Was that only thirty-six hours ago?_

His grave thoughts continued and continued as Ginny squirmed in his arms, giggling to herself.

"Whoosh, I fly! I, am a waffle!"

…………………………………

"_Why_ did I get that wasted last night?"

Harry, lying being her, said, "Funny. I was just about to ask you the same."

She sighed and turned around to face him. "You lied here the whole night, didn't you?"

"Yes."

"I told you all that stuff about being angry at myself, didn't I?"

"Yes."

"Now I have to explain myself, don't I?"

"Yes."

She sighed again and sat up. "Look, I'm just angry. Bitter, I guess. That a childish little mistake had such a great effect on my life. I mean, I know a lot of that is because of me, but it still pisses me off. He got the best of me. I let him do that."

"Why did you immediately go and get fucked up the minute you knew Tom Riddle was in you?"

Ginny stayed silent for a moment, stood and grabbed her wand from the table in front of them, Transfiguring a goblet out of a quill and mumbling a quiet spell to fill it up with water.

"It's a pattern, can't you tell?" she scoffed. "Tom Riddle makes me destroy myself with drugs and alcohol. Mostly because otherwise my life is perfect and I have no excuse. Merlin…could we _please_ pull the shades down or otherwise relocate this conversation to a darker place?"

Harry took her by the hand and led her upstairs to his dormitory. "I said horrible things to you, Ginny."

"You think I don't know how stupid I was?" she said harshly, not looking at him. He stopped in the hallway leading to his dormitory.

"What?" he faltered, gawking at her back, staggered by this sudden comment.

"I think every day how stupid I was," she scoffed, and it sounded almost like she was talking to herself. "To this day I still can't believe I was ever stupid enough to write to that bloody thing. That I was ever so stupid as to not to tell anyone even though I knew something was wrong."

"Love, we already talked about this," Harry reminded her. "You're afraid of cages, remember? The mirror?"

"Don't—don't call me that."

"Call you what? Love?"

"It means you're not angry at me, and you should be furious at me."

Harry looked bewildered. "Why the hell should _I_ be mad at _you_?"

"I broke my promise! You were brilliant, and faithful to me and came after me and everything, and I ran off and broke nearly all the promises I've ever made to you! That whole pick your poison thing you always made me promise? Well I did not pick my poison, I was mixing my poison."

"I don't care, Ginny."

"WHY NOT?!"

"You had every reason to be, you just got life changing news that I had kept from you for years."

"You didn't keep it from me, my parents did."

"And I said horrible things to you."

"I said horrible things to you first."

"You were upset."

"Which brings us right back to your first point. I just wish you'd be angry at me."

"I don't deserve to be angry at you."

"TO HELL YOU DON'T DESERVE IT!"

"WELL I DON'T!"

"YES YOU FUCKING DO!"

By now, people were poking their heads out the doors of their dormitories. Ginny looked around at them, realized she was making a scene, and let out a grunt.

"Forget it. Claim you're not angry. I know how you really feel inside."

As she walked off, Harry squeezed the bridge of his nose, before finally spinning around and screaming:

"FOR MERLIN'S SAKE I'M NOT ANGRY!"

…………………………………

A week later, Ginny had been avoiding Harry since their argument, eating in the kitchens (or, he feared, not at all) and otherwise staying in her dormitory. Dumbledore had allowed him to travel back and forth between Hogwarts and the Burrow, but today, it would all end when Hermione and Ron came back to school: his reinforcements. Hermione was the only one close enough to both him and Ginny that was of the female gender and could act as a messenger in between the two parties. It was just a plus that she was very good at reading and translating emotions and thoughts.

As soon as she stepped into the common room, Harry was in her face trying to get her to check on Ginny. He had already explained to her the whole situation, and she had already thrown in several opinions.

"_She's not angry at you, Harry. She's angry at herself for what she did. And she wants you to be angry at her for it, because then she has complete closure that she's a terrible person and can start to feel better."_

Despite that making no sense to Harry, it seemed to satisfy him. At least more so than Ron's pieces of comforting advice:

"_She's just a nutter, mate."_

"_Be lucky you didn't grow up with her."_

"_A week of her hating you? That's nothing. Try sixteen years."_

As much as his heart was in the right place, this did nothing to help Harry feel better about the situation. Mrs. Weasley had refused to comment on the situation, and on Christmas Day almost outright refused to come out of her bedroom. Percy sent back his gifts; Ginny did not come home.

Hermione sighed, gave Harry a small, comforting, quieting hug, and walked upstairs to Ginny's dormitory.

…………………………………

"Merlin's beard," she murmured when she walked inside. Empty bottles scattered her bed, joined by cigarette butts and empty plastic bags and four shoeboxes. When she looked up, Hermione noted her eyes were bloodshot and the skin around them was bruised and reddened and puffy. Her hair was a mess, and tear tracks ran down her face. She hid almost completely under the blanket, lying on her side, curled up in the fetal position, her eyes twitching but wide open. There were bruises scatter across her cheeks and dried blood around her nose and mouth, but those facts did not register with Hermione while she was in the room.

"Ginny, what in the world happened? You quit all this, remember? You were doing so well."

"Are you angry?"

"Of course I'm angry, I spent weeks trying to get you better and you waste it all in a week."

"Oh, thank _Merlin_ you are angry. I was going insane. For the last week I've just been hearing his voice over and over and over…I just had to keep getting wasted so the voice would stop…over and over and over…"

"Who are you talking about? Harry?"

"No, Tom Riddle," Ginny hummed, sounding slightly like a stoned Luna Lovegood. "He kept saying how pathetic and useless I am, how no one'll ever love me…he's right you know…over and over and over…how stupid I was, how stupid I am…he's right you know…over and over and over…"

"C'mon, Ginny, you need to sit up."

"Over and over and over…Harry doesn't love me. He'll never love me, because I'm a druggie and I'll always be a druggie and every time we ever get in a fight or anything ever makes me feel sad I'll always be a druggie and I'll always regress right back into this shit. Keep a stash of weed in my closet. If I ever have kids I'll have to tell them I've got cancer. But I'll never have kids. Maybe a crack baby, with a father I don't know or remember. But never with anyone I love. Because Harry doesn't love me. No one'll ever love me. He told me that. Over and over and over…made sure I knew that…over and over and over…"

"You know that's not true, Ginny. None of that is true. Harry loves you. He _loves_ you, Ginny. And besides, even if he didn't, you are perfectly lovable. Lots of people could love you just as much as Harry does, maybe even more."

"No one ever loves a druggie…over and over and _over_…"

"You don't have to be a druggie, Ginny. Be whoever you want to be. You can stop if you want to."

"Over and over and over…"

"Do you want to be a druggie, Ginny?"

She looked up at Hermione, her bloodshot eyes imploring, earnest in their efforts to convey the true meaning behind her word.

"No."

Not breaking eye contact with Ginny, Hermione raised her wand and waved it; all the bottles, boxes, and bags disappeared. Every trace of drug and alcohol disappeared from the room.

"You don't have to be a druggie."

Ginny's eyes clouded with tears, and she sat up only for a short moment before collapsing into Hermione's shoulder, repeating, "_Over _and_ over _and_ over…_"

…………………………………

"What's the verdict?" Harry asked when Hermione came down from the girls' dormitories, her arms wrapped around herself, wiping tears off her face with her shoulder. She sniffed and looked over at Harry.

"She's a mess, Harry," Hermione told him. "It's not even about you. It's about Riddle. She's really confused. For almost five years she's been trying to get herself over Riddle, and now she finds she can't. Ever."

"How loaded was she?"

"Harry, she—"

"Tell me the fucking truth, Hermione."

"Don't talk to her like that!" Ron roared. "She's trying to help you, don't be such a prat!"

"Get off it Ron, you want to know just as much as I do! Ginny's been up there for a week, Pace has been up there a thousand times! Merlin knows what she's bringing her, what she's been doing to her! I bet Gin had bruises and blood on her. Right?"

"Well…yes…"

"Pace apparently likes to beat the shite out of her."

"What?" Ron snapped, furious.

"She has been up there seven days. I don't know if she's eaten, no doubt she's been getting loaded the whole time, but most of all she is depressed, and confused, and _hurting_, and I can do nothing about that. For seven days I have tried twenty thousand ways to get up there. McGonagall and Dumbledore won't let me near her.

"Ginny is hurt. She is pained. I can't do anything to help her. I'm useless. Why the hell do I even call myself her boyfriend? I say terrible things to her when she's feeling bad that only make her feel worse. I make her worse when I should make her better. I can't do anything right. I'm not even angry at her when she wants me to be. Anger comes easily to me. How come I can't be angry when she wants me to be angry? But I can be ragingly livid and going on screaming rampages at the worst possible times for the worst possible reasons? I'm supposed to help her. I'm supposed to help her when she needs help, but I can't. Now she's blowing weeks of effort and withdrawal because I was too bloody selfish. It's all my fault."

"It's not your fault, Harry."

"DON'T YOU TRY TO MAKE ME FEEL BETTER! DON'T YOU DO THAT! I DON'T DESERVE THAT!"

"It's not your fault, Harry," Ron reiterated.

"To hell it isn't. You have no idea how I feel right now, Ron. To be unable to help her when she needs me. To be useless, unreliable."

Ron went from white to purple in half a second. His eyes narrowed, his nostrils flared, his fists shook with anger. He opened his mouth, but no words came out. Taking a deep breath and cracking his neck, he managed to force out words, albeit in a whisper.

"I don't know how you feel? I don't know how it feels to not be able to help Ginny when she needs help?"

Harry stared at Ron as he clenched his fist so tight the skin turned yellow and veins popped out in his forehead. Hermione—who had been pale and shaky for the majority of this "discussion"—now reached out and wrapped her arm around Ron's waist in an effort to calm him down.

…It didn't work.

…………………………………

Hermione was looking through her books and trying to find the correct spell to heal a black eye. All she knew to do was hide them, but that was insufficient now.

After she had given Ron quite a tongue lashing and he had realized what he did to his best friend and apologized profusely, she kicked him out of Gryffindor tower. Though Harry was never even angry at him, she was furious, and did not expect to be forgiving her boyfriend any time soon.

"Just forget it, 'Mione, don't even bother."

"Don't even bother _what_, Harry?" Hermione snapped.

"Don't even bother healing it. A black eye won't kill me. I deserve it anyway."

"For Merlin's sake, would you stop wallowing, I'm really getting sick of all your self-pitying."

Harry stood up and shoved his hands into his pockets. "I don't want to hear it."

"Too bad, because like it or not, I am going to tell you."

"You won't get to. I'm leaving, right now."

"You don't get to be a prat."

"Excuse me?"

"You heard me. You don't get to be a prat just because your girlfriend won't talk to you. It's pathetic, you know—what you're doing. It's pathetic."

Harry shook his head and walked away from her, stepping out of Gryffindor tower, not a clue in the world as to where he would go.

…………………………………

Harry ended up under the tree—the tree he had sat under with Ginny after their first kiss and talked. Well, the plan had been to talk, and they had. For a few minutes. But Ginny was a _really_ good kisser.

She hadn't been stoned then.

For a long time Harry had been going over in his head all the memories he had of Ginny: the best, the worst, the good times, the fights, the laughing, the talking. From even before they were together. He could remember a few times in the summer, when she would come into the kitchen with bloodshot eyes. She would blame it on lack of sleep. He could remember her fighting with Mrs. Weasley, screaming and raging. She would blame it on hating her mother. He could remember her walking around the school or sitting in the common room, looking around anxiously, not knowing where she was taking herself. She would blame it on a nightmare, or a daydream. Then when they were together. He could remember her laughing for no apparent reason. She would blame it on a letter the twins had sent her. He could remember her not eating at meals. She would blame it on simple lack of hunger, and tell them not to worry. He could remember her not paying attention to what anyone said. She would blame it on intrusive thoughts, but claimed they were no big deal. He could remember her going on long tangents that made no sense at all from one sentence to the next, bringing up events and people no one knew. She would apologize, they would blame it just on Ginny being Ginny.

Because that's who they thought she was. A strange, paranoid person who found humor in everything but had a short fuse. She got stuck in her own thoughts, she got stuck in her own imagination.

But it wasn't hers.

All those times, it wasn't what she said it was. Drunk. High. Both. Heroin. Marijuana. Cocaine. Ecstasy. Liquor. Mixing poison.

What was so great about it?

He wondered this very thought as he stared at a fag he had found in one of the cardboard boxes on the floor the night before. What was so special?

With a deep breath, he stuck the cigarette in his mouth, taking a minute to contemplate which end went in his mouth—yellow or white. He finally settled on the yellow end, and took his wand out of his pocket. Taking a few more breaths of fresh air, he prodded the end of the cigarette with his wand and ignited it.

When he inhaled, he felt tiny flakes rushing into his throat, and immediately coughed. Smoke poured out of his mouth and nose, his eyes watered, and it felt like he had eaten and snorted sand. He continued to cough, trying to force the flakes out of his throat.

That had tasted _disgusting_. Worse than black coffee. Worst than Ron's cooking. It should be a Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Bean it was so terrible.

"Gin is fucking crazy."

Harry looked up to see Ron standing in front of him. The latter nodded to Harry's face.

"How's your eye?"

"I told Hermione to leave it alone. I deserve the fucking thing."

"Bullshit, Harry. That's bullshit and you know it."

He sat down next to Harry and gestured to the cigarette. "Tried that once. Charlie got a pack, brought it home. I must've been, what? Eight? Anyway, he let us all try some, except Gin. She pouted and everything, but the great thing was she didn't tell Mum. Just sat back and watched us. Fred and George liked it, Percy wouldn't even try it, and I hated it. It tasted bad."

"I know what you mean," he said, and put the cigarette out on the bottom of his trainer before flicking it into the lake. "Sorry about what I said earlier."

"Sorry about punching you in the face."

"Can I ask why you got so upset?"

Ron took a deep breath. "When Ginny was in the Chamber, you were saving her, and I was stuck behind a pile of rocks with a bloody psychopath with no memory. When she couldn't sleep because of the withdrawal, you were lying with her on the couch, and I was screaming at you for doing so. When she almost relapsed, you saved her, and I was sleeping, perfectly unaware of what was going on. When my parents almost found out, you and Hermione came up with the perfect story, and I stayed silent. I'm never there for her, Harry. And when I try to be, she won't let me. But it goes back farther than that. I never let her on my broom, even when she begged. When she cried I called her a baby. She would want to spend time with me and I wouldn't let her. I'd throw her out of my room. Then I wasn't there for her Sorting. The most important moment in her life at that point and I couldn't see it. I couldn't see her get on the Hogwarts Express for the first time. Then, when she needed me most. When she was suffering because of that diary, I thought it was Malfoy. I never even paid attention to Ginny that year, Harry, I had no idea what was going on with her. Maybe if I had just talked to her. Maybe if I had just smiled at her once, invited her to eat breakfast with us, she wouldn't—none of this would have happened!"

He stood up and took a rock from the ground, throwing it far, far into the lake.

"God _fucking_ dammit."

Harry stood up, pushed Ron to the ground, and said, "_Shut the fuck up_."

Ron, stunned, did.

"None of us paid attention to her that year. Hell, I even admit to thinking she was a fucking freak. She couldn't even talk around me. None of us tried, Ron. It isn't just your fault. It's my fault. It's Fred and George's faults. It's Percy's fault. It's Hermione's fault for Christ's fucking sake."

"I should have paid more attention to her. Her whole life."

Harry shrugged. "Then pay more attention now."

…………………………………

"Your brother punched Harry."

"What?!" Ginny gasped, sitting straight up, suddenly becoming alert.

"Ron punched Harry," Hermione said before telling the whole story.

"Is he okay? Where is he? Oh, _God_," she asked frantically, jumping up out of bed and tripping over her foot. She was breathing heavily and Hermione gaped at her.

"How in the world are you high right now?"

"What?"

"You're high, aren't you?"

"How'd you know?"

"How did you get high? I got rid of everything!"

"I had just shot up when you came in last time. Don't worry, it's already wearing off. For the most part. Now I'm just drunk."

"What had you shot up with?"

"The worst speedball I ever made."

Hermione's nostrils flared, and she slapped Ginny straight across the face.

"Ginevra Molly Weasley, I am _done_."

_a/n And everything just falls apart._


	8. I Can't Stand Up For Falling Down

"Harry? Oh my God, Harry, are you okay?" Ginny asked him, placing light kisses on his bruised eye as her brother looked on in pain.

"I'm fine."

"Why the hell wouldn't you let Hermione heal this fucking thing?" Ginny scolded, pulling out her wand. She muttered a quick spell, and immediately, his eye healed. Harry winced as he stared at his girlfriend, the bruises that scattered across her skin, the blood that caked around her nose and mouth, and the large, red handprint that shone on her gray skin.

"Why don't you do that on yourself?"

Ginny sighed. "That bad?"

"Yeah."

"I'm sorry. Pace, she's taken the weed out of her superweed."

"So now it's super?" Harry asked, confused.

"No, now it's a million times worse."

Harry took Ginny's shoulders and stared into her eyes. "You have to stop, Ginny."

Tears formed in her eyes. "I know."

"We're going to help you. We're going to help you because there is nothing we would love more than to help you. Me, Ron, Hermione, your parents—what's wrong?"

She had fallen forward into his chest and sobbed. "She hates me."

"Who? Your mum? She doesn't hate you, Gin, she's just upset—"

"No, not my mum you twit! Hermione! She hates me!"

Ron looked at Ginny with curiosity, and spoke for the first time. "She doesn't hate you."

"Yeah, she does. She saw me in my dormitory and I was drunk and wearing off a high and she got angry because of all the work she did to help me and I just threw it all away."

"Goddamnit, Gin, what's wrong with you? You were high again?"

"It was just a really bad speedball! Seriously, it just felt like coke, I wondered if Pace had cheated me and didn't add any heroin."

"Goddamnit, Gin!"

"I'm sorry!" Ginny cried, and she coiled herself into a tiny ball on the grass, pressing her head into her thighs and putting her hands behind her neck. "I'm sorry, I can't help it."

Harry pulled Ginny out of that position and put a hand to her cheek, avoiding the petite handprint on her face. "I'm going to help you. We are going to help you. Hermione is going to help you. It won't take her long to come around, Gin, you know she loves you."

"I've been horrible to her."

"Not on purpose," Harry said. "Now you need to eat. Please. I know you haven't eaten since you left the Burrow."

"Yes I did."

"You did?"

"Yeah, I had some chocolate. Helps with hangovers."

"Hate to break it to you, love, but that doesn't count," he said. "I'm talking real food."

"Real food," Ginny mimicked, in a ridiculously exaggerated deep voice.

"It's dinner now," Harry said. "You're eating whether you want to or not."

"So you're going to treat me like I have an eating disorder now?"

"Yes," Harry said. "Would you like to clean up a bit first?"

"I could not care any less than I do now about how I look," she said. Then, hesitantly, she added, "How do I look?"

"Like hell," Harry said, kissing her hand. "The most beautiful hell one could dream of."

Hell was more accurate. The recent events, it seemed, had placed its effects on her physical appearance. Besides the injuries on her face and the bruised skin on the inside of her elbow, her skin was gray in paleness; her hair was dull, frizzed, messed, and unwashed; her eyes were bloodshot, with purple bruises underneath to advertise her lack of sleep. Fading tears tracks had made their way onto her face somehow. This was all not to mention the fact that she was skinnier than ever before. She had always a slight girl, but now she gave the impression that if a breeze picked up, she'd soar right into the lake next to them.

Harry stood, brushed off his jeans, and stuck out his hand to Ginny. She took it, and when he pulled her up, he pulled too hardly, and she stumbled forward on her feet, letting out a small squeal.

"Ginny, how much weight have you lost the since the withdrawal started?" Ron asked. They, apparently, had not been noticing Ginny's rapidly declining weight.

She looked at the ground shamefully. "Twenty-three pounds."

"In a month!?" Ron cried. Ginny, tears again sprouting in her eyes, nodded. "How much do you weigh?"

She sighed. "Eighty-four pounds this morning."

Harry's eyes flashed darkly, and Ron began to turn red.

"Ginny, that's not underweight, that's anorexic," Harry said, and got a sudden flash of Angelina asking him about Ginny's eating habits a few hours before she woke up. "Why didn't the Healers agree?"

"No one said anything to imply they should. Besides, I've always been underweight, Harry," she said, glaring at him. "I'm five-five and for the last year I've hung out happily at one-oh-seven. I've always been rather underweight, they always try to get me on some eating plan, but I never do."

"Well here's my eating plan," Harry said. "We're going to the Great Hall and you're going to eat until you explode."

…………………………………

Hermione Jean Granger was livid. She stormed through the halls at an unusually swift pace, blindly turning corners and moving down staircases and walking through doors. She had no idea where she was going.

_Grr!_

Why? _Why_? After all the work they had done, and she just throws it away?

Because of Tom Riddle. He had fucked up too much in their lives. Killed Harry's parents. Killed Mrs. Weasley's brothers. Tortured Neville's parents.

Killed Ginny's soul.

After that year, she never recovered. She never recovered from the shock that she had actually been an accomplice in the systematic annihilation of Muggle-borns. Luckily no one was seriously hurt.

_I mean, come on!_ Hermione thought. _I was one of the victims! I got over it years ago!_

And with one mistake a whole life was ruined.

Regardless, it was no excuse. It was no excuse to turn to drugs, to slowly kill yourself each and every day. It was no excuse to skive one's classes, one's responsibilities.

She kept saying she wanted to change, but she kept reverting back to drugs. So, what? She'd just live her whole life with drugs on hold in case something horrible happened?

She was just so…_argh! _

Hermione turned on heel, now pacing back and forth in an empty corridor few people knew about. They had discovered it not long ago, in sixth year, and started using it frequently when they needed to get away. Harry, Ron, and she, that is. It was not even on the Marauder's Map, which almost frightened them.

So she paced the hall frantically, not even in control of her own body. She was so _stupid_. Ginny, that is. Hermione understood perfectly that the girl's life was always hell. She had genuine issues that she didn't completely understand yet how to deal with. But seriously. Buy a cat. Not heroin.

_GAH!_

_Think of something else, think of something else, think of something else._

The word 'heroin' was constantly reminding Hermione of a vocabulary game she had played in school. It was the year she was accepted to Hogwarts, mere days before she would find out. At school, she was always put in advanced classes. She was grouped with children more at her level. For that reason, everyone around her was very mature, in their knowledge and personalities. She liked it. She was around people that were like her all the time.

Her English teacher had made them play a vocabulary game to brush up. She let the students make their own questions and ask each other.

One of the kids—Eugene—was a rather interesting child. Some people went as far as to call him disturbed. This was reflected in his questions.

_Tommy dropped Freddy's cell phone, so Freddy lit Tommy's cat on fire. Is Freddy a vindictive person?_

But the one that constantly stuck out in Hermione's mind was this:

_Mark went to the store to buy pens and heroin. Is Mark a thrifty shopper?_

It had made them all laugh—even uptight Hermione—when another boy, Max, responded with, "Well, was he planning on selling the heroin to others?"

"No, he'd keep it greedily for himself," Eugene had answered.

"Then no, Mark is not a thrifty shopper," Max had concluded.

For years that question had stuck out in Hermione's mind. Teenagers seem to have a fascination with things they aren't allowed. Drugs. Alcohol. Sex. Breaking rules. She had always wondered what was so amazing about it. It was the same thought that had crossed her mind in primary school, when all the kids were enthralled with violence. Then as they grew, it was sex, drugs, alcohol. It started with boys getting suspended in school for comparing penis sizes and grew into her returning from school one summer to find that people had gotten suspended for alcohol possession. And, as it happens, Eugene had gotten expelled for drug dealing. One pair of students had been suspended for having sex in a broom closet.

What was so amazing about it?

People often saw her as a prude, but really, she just didn't understand the obsession. It wasn't to be confused with outright offence—it didn't offend her. She had nothing against penises, or sex—she was a big fan of the penis. She was a big fan of sex.

She just didn't understand why it had to be a sport.

People often saw her as a nark, but really, she just didn't understand that fascination. It wasn't that she had anything against _trying_ drugs, or _occasionally_ having a glass of something.

She just didn't understand why it had to be ritualistic.

…………………………………

_Scream._

She didn't.

_Scream!_

She didn't.

_SCREAM!_

Her lips stayed completely sealed, and not even a whimper escaped. Harry's gentle snoring in her ear reminded her that nothing could hurt her. The nightmare was just that. A nightmare.

_He's dead._

No one was going to hurt him, no one was going to hurt her. It was just the paranoia.

_He's dead._

Her breaths became shallow, shaky. She closed her eyes, before realizing just how bad of an idea that was.

_He's dead._

She tried to calm down. Think of better things. Living Harry. Ron. Hermione. Her mother. Her father. All her family.

_He's dead._

Oh, how she wanted to scream. Nothing would have satisfied her more than letting herself scream. But the prospect of waking up Harry and letting him discover that she had a nightmare, then having to _explain_ to him what the nightmare was about. No.

_He's dead._

_STOP IT!_ Ginny could remember herself shouting. She had begged, pleaded with this man to let Harry go, to not hurt him, but he just kept following them. And Harry had her in his arms and they couldn't run. They were trapped. Her whole world was falling down on top of them and all they could do was stand there and watch it happen as he came closer and closer and closer…

_He's dead._

The blood had splattered on Ginny.

_It's just the paranoia. No one's going to hurt your baby._

_Except him…_

_SCREAM!_

Finally, Ginny let a soft whimper out of her mouth. Regardless, it was enough to awaken Harry, and he immediately took defense.

"What happened, what's going on?"

"Nothing," Ginny said. "Just a dream."

"Dreams aren't just dreams, Ginny, you have to tell me. What did you see?"

"He killed you," Ginny whispered, tears springing to her eyes. His face fell, and he began to stroke her cheeks as tears fell freely down them.

"Tell me about it."

"He had a knife," she cried. "And you had me in your arms and you were trying to run but it didn't work. He had us trapped. You were running but you weren't moving and you kept screaming for me to go but I wouldn't let go of you. If you were going to die I was too. But he didn't want me. He went straight to you, stabbed you right through your throat, and blood splattered all over me and you fell backwards, but I was still in your arms. And I still wouldn't let go. He walked away and left us alone and I could feel the shield going down and I knew that if I wanted to walk away I could, but I didn't. I stayed right with you the whole time you were dead. And I died there too, right on top of you."

"Well…it kind of has a bittersweet niceness to it."

Ginny chuckled through her tears and shifted around on the couch, kissing all of Harry's face. "I love you, Harry, I love you so much."

"I love you too, Gin," he said, holding her tight to him. "I won't let anything hurt you."

"Don't die, Harry," she murmured into his chest. "I don't want you to die."

"I don't want you to die either, Ginny," he whispered into her ear, stroking her hair as she sobbed into him. "It's okay, Gin. It's going to be okay. I'm not planning on dying anytime soon, so we seem to be good in that area."

"And I'm going to stop. Now. Never again. I know I said that last time, but really, really and truly, I am going to stop. So that you don't know what it's like for me to die. At least not just yet."

Harry kissed her forehead, but Ginny one-upped him by craning her neck to kiss his lips. She rolled him over slightly so she was straddling his waist and still kissing him, and he moaned quietly. Her mouth moved down to the hollow below his ear, just as—

"OI!"

Harry burst up from under Ginny, and was suddenly standing next to the couch, messing the back of his hair.

"What the bloody hell is this?" Ron asked.

"She had a dream I died!" Harry defended quickly, panicked, pacing up and down a one-foot area.

"You just might if you keep getting so cozy on the couch with my sister!"

"Oh for Merlin's sake, Ron," Ginny groaned.

She stood up and grinned at him, fixing his sleep-tousled hair for him. When she was sufficiently done, she grinned again.

"Didn't you see?" She patted his shoulders once, still simpering. "I was on top."

And she walked to the portrait hole for breakfast. Harry quickly darted after her, mumbling something about anorexia and making sure she ate.

…………………………………

"Love, you know this is ridiculous," Ron told her gently, caressing her arm. She shook her head.

"It's not ridiculous. I worked hard to keep her healthy, you worked hard to keep her healthy, and Harry worked hard to keep her healthy— I mean, even _she_ worked hard to keep herself healthy! And all that was thrown down the drain, and she acts like it means nothing!"

"She knows how stupid she was, Hermione. She thinks you hate her," he said, and an angry look flashed through his eyes. "You don't, do you?"

"I'm not answering that question," Hermione said obstinately.

"Hermione Granger," Ron said, leaning down to take her chin in his hand. "Ginny and you are like sisters. She needs you right now. And you need her. Even if you don't want to admit it."

"I don't need her for anything," Hermione persisted.

"Who else will you talk to about girl stuff?" Ron asked. He didn't say it, and neither did she, but it was floating in the air as though one of them had said it: Hermione didn't have any other girl friends. Not really. Not who she could talk to comfortably about the things she needed to talk about.

"I'll manage."

"Hermione please!" Ron said, and he stood up, throwing his arms in the air. "Bloody hell, I know how it is with you when this happens to Harry and me!"

She narrowed her eyes; she didn't like the sound of that. "What are you talking about?"

"I'm talking about when two people you love are acting like stubborn, stupid gits and nothing you do seems to have any effect on them!"

"You're calling me a stubborn, stupid git now, are you?" she retaliated, standing up as well, placing her hands on her hips in attempt to radiate her anger enough to scare him off this attack.

"Yeah," he said bravely, coolly, keeping eye contact with her and not wavering in the least bit. "Yeah, I am."

"This is different than your fights with Harry!" she exploded. "When you fight with Harry one of you is being a big selfish idiot!"

"Hate to break it to you, Hermione, but right now, you're the one being the big selfish idiot! Don't you _realize_ this isn't about you? Can you fathom that? This is not about you. It's about Ginny, it's about how _she_ needs help and all you can think about is yourself! Stop being selfish, Hermione! Ginny needs you. You two are like sisters, and she's helped you billions of times. Find it in your enormous brain to realize this isn't about you, stop thinking of yourself, and put this stupid thing behind you. This is about Ginny, and how she needs help. If you can't realize that, and you aren't willing to help her in the worst time of her life, then something is really wrong with you Hermione, and I wonder how you can even start to think of Ginny as your friend."

He started toward the door of his dormitory.

"You know what?" he said, his hand on the door, as if suddenly making up his mind about something. "You say you're done with Ginny? Well until you fix this with her, I'm done with _you_."

Hermione's face fell, along with several thousand tears.

"W-What?"

"I thought you were different than this. I thought you were nice and caring and compassionate. Completely selfless. Turns out I was wrong. You're stubborn, uncaring, and selfish. I love you, but I can't be with you if I think that every time I do something stupid you're gonna be 'done' with me."

And he left the room, leaving Hermione all alone in a dormitory that wasn't hers. She fell to her knees after her legs gave out and sobbed freely, wailing incessantly and without shame.

…………………………………

"I hope you know that if this doesn't work I'm murdering you," Ron muttered to Harry when Hermione was declared absent from their first class the next morning.

"It'll work."

"Harry, Hermione has never missed a class in her life unless she was in the hospital wing," Ron hissed, anger radiating off him, the tips of his ears turning pink.

"If it's any consolation," Harry began. "Gin took the day off too. She was too afraid of how everyone would react to her appearance after last night."

Ron shuddered. Dinner the previous night had been perhaps the worst meals he had ever sat through. The whispers and pointing and gasps and speculations, the judgmental expressions and suspicious eyes, not to mention the fact that this was all increased by the fact that Harry nearly had to force food down Ginny's throat. He had spent the whole meal shoving food in his mouth without knowing what it was, focusing only on what blokes appeared to be the meanest to Ginny, because surely he couldn't beat them all up, and he would never beat up a girl, unless of course it was his sister or some new fetish of Hermione's. Though both exceptions would still upset him deeply.

"You think she might try to find her?"

"If she isn't too distraught," Harry said casually, but it caused tears to prick into Ron's eyes. He pushed them the farthest back he could get them.

"Oh," Harry said. "And I'd prefer if it were just a curse."

"What?"

"When you murder me," Harry said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world what he had been talking about. "I think that if you beat me to death it would be much too painful. So I'd prefer a curse. Then you can beat me up."

"I'm not promising anything," Ron responded.

…………………………………

Hermione kept needing to remind herself why she wasn't in class. Luckily, the only reminder she needed was a single look into the mirror to see the tracks of her tears, and not the painful memories of the night before.

That was the worst moment of her entire life.

And now what was she doing because of it?

She wasn't crying—well she was, but she wasn't consumed completely in tears on her bed, wailing at the top of her lungs into her pillow, her roommates stroking her hair and trying to get a story out of her, like she had been last night. No. She had stayed up all night last night devising the perfect plan to find Ginny and make things right so that she never had to be more than a minute away from Ron ever again.

Because he was right.

She was being selfish. And stubborn. And uncaring. In fact…

She was being a cold-hearted bitch.

His words were burning her skin like a brand. She could feel them written all over her.

_Selfish. Stubborn. Uncaring. Selfish. Stubborn. Uncaring._

Over and over again.

Burning, burning, burning.

Now she knew how Joan of Arc felt as the flames rose to her Roman nose and her Walkman started to melt…

Hermione had no right to take her place with the human race.

"Come on, Ginny," she muttered to herself. "Where the hell are you?"

She couldn't be in class. If there's one place Ginevra Molly Weasley would not be in right now it was class.

So where was she?

Not in Gryffindor Tower, not in the library or the Great Hall or any of the bathrooms or seemingly anywhere in the castle.

So Hermione ran up to Gryffindor tower, darted up to Ron and Harry's dormitory, focused only on getting the Marauder's Map.

The lake.

She was _in_ the lake.

"Oh for Merlin's sake, Ginny, make this harder for me."

_a/n anyone who knows what song the lyric about Joan of Arc is from is awesome. Ali you don't count._


End file.
